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THE LADY ON THE 
DRAWINGROOM FLOOR 


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THE LADY ON THE 
DRAWINGROOM FLOOR 


BY 

M. E. COLERIDGE 

n 

AUTHOR OF “THE KING WITH TWO FACES,” “THE FIERY DAWN," 
‘THE SHADOW ON THE WALL," ETC. 


NEW YORK 

LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. 
LONDON ; EDWARD ARNOLD 
1906 


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I 


HEN first I came to know Lucilla, she 



' ^ had lived on this unworthy earth for 
many years — how many I do not recollect. 
She told me once, for she was frank about 
matters regarding which most women are 
silent, as well as reserved on those which 
they discuss. I recollect certain words that 
she used. 

“ I welcome the years gladly ! ” she 
said. 

They struck me — and I wondered why. 
Why should she, why should any one else for 
the matter of that, “ welcome the years 
gladly ? ” “ Patiently ” — “ submissively ” — 

resignedly ” — these expressions I could have 
understood. How was it possible that any 
living thing should welcome “ gladly ” the 


2 


2 


THE LADY ON THE 


harbingers of eyelessness, toothlessness, gout, 
and sleep ? 

And then she told me her age ; and not 
caring to think of it, for, to my mind. Death 
sits always on the doorstep of any one whom 
I love, I changed the current of our talk. I 
have no memory for such details. Those who 
honour me with their friendship do not belong 
to Time. 

She lived above me, in every sense of the 
word. Light was her object in the geography 
of life ; ease being mine. She wanted to go 
up as many stairs as possible — I as few. 
Therefore I lodged on the ground-floor, while 
she had rooms au premier. Her coming into 
these rooms made such a curious difference 
that the period before she came is all con- 
fusion, like those chaotic periods of History 
before there were any Kings and Queens. 

To the best of my belief, however, I had 
lived in the house about a hundred years 
before I grew conscious of her presence. I 
had looked for a hundred years at the little 
flat houses in front, each one exactly like the 


DEAWINGKOOM FLOOE 


3 


other. I had looked for a hundred years upon 
the soot-strewn “ leads ” behind. 

After the coming of Lucilla the view 
changed. Only an effort of memory now 
recalls to me the fact that once it was dull. 

“ These houses all alike ! Who ever said 
such a thing ? He could have had no eyes 
in his head,” said she. 

“ Well ! ” I observed, “ you can’t see much 
in the house opposite.” 

“ You can see a story written by Balzac, if 
you look. That house opposite is The Old 
Lady's House. Nobody lives there except the 
Old Lady and her dogs and her cook and her 
maid. It is all in apple-pie order ; and she 
thinks she can never have anybody to stay 
because there is not room enough and the 
servants would be overworked. Keally, she 
does not care for other people except in other 
people’s houses.” 

“ But the next house is exactly like it.” 

“ Forgive me — nothing could be more 
different ! The house next door is The 
Children's House. There are six of the 


4 


THE LADY ON THE 


children, and only a mother, who’s a widow, 
and one general, to look after them all ; but 
the general does not leave so often as the Old 
Lady’s cook, and they are always having 
people to stay — sometimes a girl with red 
hair, sometimes a girl with black, sometimes 
both girls together. They’re not pretty 
children, but the baby is — well, she is a baby ! 
— and now and then the artist who lives on 
the other side, and has a knocker made of 
snakes, will borrow her to paint.” 

“ The next door on the other side of the 
Old Lady ? ” I said, with a gasp. 

“ I have not yet made up my mind as to 
the next door on the other side of the Old 
Lady. He must have something to do with a 
flower shop, I think. There is a palm in the 
window. I am sure she could not afford to 
huy a palm.” 

Aiter that I looked out for an Old Lady at 
one window and a Baby at another, and an 
Artist at another and a mysterious Florist’s 
wife at another, and life had four new 
interests. As for the leads, they disappeared. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


5 


Lucilla covered them up with flower pots and 
ran a creeper along the wall. 

The change without, however, was nothing 
to the change within. 

Yet before she came I had considered 
myself rather fortunate in my lodgings, as 
London lodgings go. There was nobody 
musical in them to begin with. Nobody 
played scales. 

To continue, I was on good terms with the 
landlord — a small trim, wiry, green-eyed man, 
wide awake and observant. When not at 
work he stood with his hands in his pockets, 
and an oddly wistful air of expecting some- 
thing that never came. It was, perhaps, his 
wife, for she would make no response when 
he summoned her, and he summoned her 
rather often. He was an ex-butler, and he 
had a kind of distant regard for a gentleman 
— even for a gentleman who was not rich. 

“ He calls me Sir — and I like it ! ” said a 
young fellow of six, an acquaintance of mine, 
when I questioned him once as to the 
character of his butler. 


6 


THE LADY ON THE 


My landlord called me Sir ; and I liked it. 

He finished a bottle of wine sometimes, 
without asking leave ; but at the slightest 
hint he always made it clear that he would 
not have done this if he had not thought me 
a gentleman. I forbore to ask him why steal- 
ing from a gentleman was not stealing at all, 
when stealing from any one else was. He 
stole nothing besides, and my respect for his 
character suffered little diminution because 
his code of Justice was not ethically sound. 
Eobin Hood held much as he did. Most 
likely I stole something from him without 
knowing it. We are all robbers, if it comes 
to that, and we live by depriving each other 
of valuable assets for which money is no com- 
pensation. I would not have taken twice the 
money, to do for him what he did for me, to 
brush his clothes and clean his boots. Surely 
he was entitled to an extra glass of wine on 
occasion. 

“Very wrong indeed!” said Lucilla, with- 
out paying the slightest heed to my line of 
argument. “ He never touches anything in 


DBAWINGROOM FLOOR 


7 


my cupboard. If you want him to have an 
extra glass of wine, tell him so ! ” 

I did. 

From that day to this he has never touched 
a drop ; which inclines me to think that stolen 
wine — like stolen waters — must be sweet. 

His deference in conversation pleased. It 
is not granted to every one to talk well about 
the weather. Shepherds do so, according to 
a brilliant modern essayist, and sailors like- 
wise. If the essayist had had the privilege of 
knowing this estimable man, my landlord 
would have been included. When the weather 
was very hot, he alluded to the eruption of 
some distant volcano in a tone implying that, 
of course, I knew all about it. If there was 
a hard frost, he mentioned icebergs in the 
North Sea, and said something respectful 
about the Glacial Theory as though it were 
a friend of mine. 

The landlady was a much cleverer man 
than the landlord. Her weekly bills were a 
marvel of ingenuity. No single item amounted 
to more than sixpence — in fact it was, as a 


8 


THE LADY ON THE 


rule, far below that sum — and yet the total 
caused dismay. She was tall and rather 
handsome ; hard, black hair ; hard, black eyes ; 
the slightly aquiline nose that governs trade. 
Her husband stood much in awe of her; his 
instinctive knowledge that I did also, formed 
another bond between us. Outwardly, she 
was more honest than he, but she was voluble, 
and I would rather lose half a bottle of wine 
any day than the idle froth of fancies that her 
sharp tongue put to flight. It is open to me 
to get another bottle of wine, it is not open to 
me to call back the mood that is gone. The 
attitude of the landlord always implied that I 
knew many things which he would give the 
world to know. The attitude of his wife 
always implied that I must desire to know 
many things that she knew, things that I 
would have given the world not to know. She 
fulfilled to the letter the terrible description of 
being a host in herself. Two or three other 
women might have rushed into the room and 
made less noise in it than she did. There 
was no keeping her out. She would come in. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


9 


She would tell me why coals had risen and 
what had gone wrong with the sink. She 
seemed to think that these mysterious afflic- 
tions were in some way due to me — that I 
was bound in honour to give her an equivalent 
in solid cash for the annoyance that they 
caused. Coals and the sink do not interest 
me. I used to hum the air from “Cox 
and Box : ” 

“Coals haven’t got souls 
Any more than they have legs.” 

I used to wonder why I never could say 
Don't come in when I heard her rat-tat-tat on 
my door. I could no more say it than 
Macbeth could say “Amen” to the pious 
ejaculation of the groom in his sleep. There 
are things that cannot be said. 

Still I preferred even the landlady to 
the landlady’s maidservant. She was always 
addressed as “ Mahry,” a cockney equi- 
valent for the French name of Marie, which 
is considered much more elegant than Mary 
plain and simple. Her shoes were down-at- 


10 


THE LADY ON THE 


heel : her hair was neither up nor down ; 
her face looked as if she slept in the coal- 
hole. When I asked her to do anything, 
she said Yiss ; and when I asked her if 
she knew anything, she said Naow ! 

Lucilla had not dwelt in the house a 
week before a subtle transformation took 
place. 

First of all the shoes of Mahry reformed 
themselves. Instead of flap-flopping about 
the room like a moribund fish, they 
began to move quietly and steadily. Some 
one had given her a new pair of shoes, I 
imagined. 

A day or two later, some one appeared 
to have given her new hair. She arranged 
it in bright and pretty plaits. She looked 
like a different being. 

Yet later she appeared with a new face 
and new hands. I did not know her. Not 
for the world would I have given my land- 
lady a conversational opening ; but I ex- 
pressed surprise and gratification to my 
landlord. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


11 


“ Yes sir,” he rejoined. “ It’s Miss Z. 
She takes a interest in the gurl.” 

There was an unmistakable air of rejuve- 
nescence about him also. He had a furtive 
appearance of enjoying occupations that were 
not in the day’s work, nailing up creepers 
and the like. He never actually whistled, 
but he looked as if some day he might. He 
expressed to me, with deference, as if I 
had provided him with her, his opinion that 
he had done very well to secure Miss Z. 
as a lodger. 

“ She’s a lady, sir, she is ! ” 

Was Miss Z. taking an interest in him 
too ? 

There was a strange silence on the part 
of the landlady. 

Even the landlady was not the same. 
She cooked much better than before — or 
much less badly. I once remarked with 
hesitation, anxious however, to show that I 
was not indifferent, how much more enjoy- 
able dinner had become of late. I knew 
how things ought not to be done ; but 


12 


THE LADY ON THE 


beyond this I knew nothing. Miss Z. came 
to the front again at once. Miss Z., the 
landlady assured me, took a interest in 
cooking, she knew how things ought to be 
done, she had suggested certain amendments, 
certain methods in vogue at all the fashion- 
able clubs. The landlord ought to have 
known about them, but he did not. He 
never did nothing but read “ The Dyly 
Myle.” How was she, the landlady, to 
know ? She was not a idle man, she thanked 
goodness ! But when somebody took a 
interest in the food that was sent up to 
them, why you liked to show as you was 
not a perfect fool ! I had taken a deep 
and mournful interest in the food that was 
sent up to me before now; but she ignored 
this. 

All these improvements alarmed me not 
a little. Suppose Miss Z. began to take an 
interest in the only person now left outside 
the sphere of her beneficence? 

Fear was awake and astir. 

Jealousy awoke next. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


13 


To the backyard a cat was wont to come, 
the only thing on four legs that ever had 
come willingly to me. 

Now there are cats and cats. To say “ 
cat ” is as indefinite as if one said “ A man.” 

There is the Gray Cat, the Cat of Egypt, 
a goddess calm and smooth and careless of 
mankind, fascinating, as certain women are, 
from utter indifference. She inherits the 
stately and gracious manners, the lofty 
reserve of a long line of ancestors, one of 
whom, no doubt, gazed with gold eyes upon 
the Pharaoh of the Exodus. It is a privi- 
lege to look after a cat like that. 

There is the Persian, redolent of Omar, 
catching, if ever she caught anything at all, 
nothing inferior to a bulbul ; fed, like the 
Eoman gluttons, upon the tongues of nightin- 
gales. “ Is she not an angel ? ” I have heard 
my cousin cry enthusiastically, as the chosen 
of her hearth stood up and waved a tail as big 
as a Turk’s head. But my cousin was wrong. 
The angels have nothing feline about them. 
“ Where there are birds there are angels.” 


14 


THE LADY ON THE 


That cat is a Sphinx, like her sister of 
Egypt. 

There is the White Cat, dear to fairy tale, 
amiable, gentle, not so fond of her claws as 
other cats — a perfect lady. 

There is the Black Cat, green-eyed, not a 
single spot of snow on her breast. Why she, 
of all oats, should be considered lucky, I have 
never been able to imagine. She brings with 
her a Faust-like sense of expeditions on a 
broomstick, of the revels of witches out for 
the night on their unsabbatical Sabbath. 

The Back Street Cat was none of these. It 
was an outcast cat, a cat with a past, a cat 
whose paw was against every other oat. Pity 
for its forlorn condition one rainy day induced 
me to set out a saucer of the stuff called 
“milk” which Mahry brought me with my 
tea. I never talked cat to it. I am not good 
at languages, though very fond of them. 
But I named it Katerfelto, and by and by it 
answered to that name. The landlady kept 
it only because she kept mice. If it did not 
get enough mouse to eat, that was not her 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


15 


fault, for there were plenty on the premises : 
but it looked thin and jagged, and I think she 
threw boots at it. I cannot say that it became 
a friend, but it was less of an enemy to me 
than other cats. We established an armed 
neutral'ty — at least I did, for Katerfelto was 
armed rather than neutral, and showed his 
claws whenever I showed my hand. He had 
forgotten how to purr, if ever he knew how, 
but he swore like a trooper, and I believe he 
knew that I liked to hear him swear at the 
landlady. He never swore at me. At night, 
when he was in good voice, he sat upon the 
roof and sang. Then, indeed, I have awaked to 
find myself wishing that Katerfelto were dead. 

One day he did not come as usual for milk. 
I thought perhaps he had gone a-hunting. 
He did sometimes; but then he always re- 
turned an hour or two later. As he never 
came at all, I questioned the landlord. 

“ It’s Miss Z., sir,” said he. “ She takes a 
interest in cats, sir.” 

He offered to fetch Katerfelto for me, but I 
declined. I was not going to have the cast- 


16 


THE LADY ON THE 


off cats of Miss Z. to tea when she was tired 
of them. She must be very fond of cats to 
have grown fond of Katerfelto. 

Next day — it was the day we heard of the 
relief of Kimberley — I was in high spirits, 
having just telegraphed the news to my 
cousin, whose boy was in the Belief Force. 
As I came in at the door, I saw a beautiful 
cat walking downstairs with great dignity, a 
“ Union Jack” ribbon tied round its neck in 
a bow. It had been brushed and combed 
until its tabby fur stood round its head in a 
ruff. It looked all but a Persian. With 
difficulty I recognised my old acquaintance. 

“ Why, Katerfelto ! ” I said; and Katerfelto 
rubbed himself against my legs and purred, 

“ Persica ! ” cried a voice from above. 

Katerfelto jumped upstairs, two steps at a 
time. 

“ I beg your pardon,” I said primly, 
addressing space, “ but that cat’s name is 
Katerfelto.” 

“ I daresay it was Katerfelto,” said the 
voice, “ but it’s going to be Persica now. 


DEAWINGBOOM FLOOE 


17 


Purrsica — PU double B — I taught her to 
purr yesterday.” 

“ Allow me to point out,” I said, “ that 
this is a Tom-cat.” 

“ That can’t be helped,” said the same voice. 
“I’ve called it Persica.” 

^)cl never heard mere air, converted into word 
of mouth, sound so decided. There was the 
noise of a door shut. 

I felt annoyed. I persuaded myself that I 
was really fond of Katerfelto — that I resented 
the attitude of the fdcheuse troisUme who had 
thrust herself between us. He never came 
near me after that. He always went up to 
tea with Miss Z. I believe she gave him cake. 

Mahry had become another girl. The land- 
lord had become another man. Katerfelto 
had become another cat. 

The change in my landlady alarmed me more 
than all the other changes put together. 
Even the landlady had changed. Nothing 
remained unchanged except myself. 

Alarm and jealousy increased. 1 enter- 
tained a nervous terror of Miss Z. 

8 


18 


THE LADY ON THE 


II 


OSITIVE aversion was the next stage. 



Bump — thump — bump — thump — bump 
— thump — what was that going upstairs ? 

“ If it were to come down,” I said to myself, 
“ it would come down like the Ode of Klop- 
stock that Heine heard, tumbling from the 
top storey to the bottom. Good gracious ! 
what can it be ? ” 

I rang the bell. 

No one came. 

I rang again, after a fashion to let people 
know that an angry man was ringing. My 
landlord appeared, very much out of breath. 

“ I beg your parden, sir,” said he, “ I was 
a-helping of Miss Z.’s pianner into her 
room.” 

She had a piano then, and it was her piano 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


19 


that went upstairs like that. “ Light as fairy 
foot can fall ” — she had a piano. 

She let me know it too. That evening — it 
was a Thursday — without a single preliminary 
chord that might have suggested what was 
coming — she struck up Chopin’s Funeral 
March. 

Now, if I have a weakness for anything on 
this earth, it is for Funeral Marches. The 
only fault I have to find with them is, that 
they do not last. No one is ever half long 
enough being buried to please me ; and they 
do not begin soon enough neither. In my 
opinion, a Funeral March ought to begin like 
death itself — suddenly, majestically, without 
preparation. Thus it began when Lucilla 
played. She struck into the mighty chords 
without any preface or prelude. 

I sat with bowed head, listening. 

We had heard that day of the relief of 
Ladysmith. I had been living lightly but 
unsteadily, fluttered by an excitement that 
was too giddy for joy. After the long inter- 
minable months of waiting — after the fury of 


20 


THE LADY ON THE 


grief as one attempt failed after the other — 
my brain reeled, I think, at the tidings of 
success. I was not the only one. 

The huge placards —the shouts — the flags — 
the chiming bells — the signals, roused a wild 
passion of vanity that shamed me after an 
hour or two, as if I had drunk champagne 
when I ought rather to have fallen upon my 
knees. It was not that I had forgotten the 
dead, but I had wilfully turned away from 
the quiet place of their rest. Now, at the 
touch of a hand that I had never seen, they 
came back. At the touch of a hand that I 
had never seen, my solemn rejoicing in their 
glory stilled the feverish clatter of triumph, 
unworthy thinking men, that had possessed 
me. I looked again at the little figure of 
Gordon above my mantelpiece. I thought 
of one lying far off among the sands of 
Egypt. 

All the next day I buoyed myself up with 
the hope that Chopin’s Funeral March would 
begin again in the evening, I heard the dead 
leaves blowing over him as I sat at work 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


21 


among my musty books and papers — dead 
leaves too, but of another kind. 

There is this about a mechanical occupa- 
tion, that it sets the mind free to follow her 
own bent when business hours are over. 
Often have I envied the artist, the musician, 
the literary man, whose business is his 
pleasure. Yet it is not the musician who 
most enjoys the music. He knows too well — 
for himself and even for another — the agony 
of failure. Fingers too cold or too hot — 
feelings too hot or too cold. You may praise 
him up to the skies, but he has not earned his 
own approval. Comfort him if you can ! 
What is the hideous clapping noise of a 
thousand hands to him who has heard the 
music of the spheres and rendered it wrongly ? 
If it were not for his bread and butter, poor 
wretch, he would rather be hissed! The 
artist, if he sees beauty beyond our ken, frets 
himself often almost to death because others 
are blind and do not care to buy that which 
it is more than meat and drink to him to 
paint. Even the literary man, to whom his 


22 


THE LADY ON THE 


books are daily breakfast, dinner, and supper, 
does not know the taste of a book as he does 
who has been kept from it for nine hours out 
of sixteen. 

As soon as I could get free — and never had 
the office appeared to demand more attention 
— I hurried home to be in readiness for the 
funeral. 

Dinner ended, I threw myself into an arm- 
chair, put my feet on the fender and prepared 
to pass into another world. 

I looked at the little statue of Gordon, and 
I waited. Alas I a piano listened for bursts 
into song no sooner than a watched pot boils ! 
The hour came and went — the piano remained 
dumb. 

The next night came, and the next night. 
Still the piano kept silence. 

Did it never sound except when a siege was 
raised ? 

The rest of the week passed, as many weeks 
of the wonderful thing called life do pass, in a 
blank heedlessness. I have no recollection of 
it. A strong conviction forced itself upon me. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 23 

that I should hear that piano again on the 
day week that followed the relief of Lady- 
smith. As nine o’clock drew near I could 
hardly control my eagerness. Lucilla had 
begun at five minutes to nine a week ago. I 
sat by my fire under the shadow of Gordon, 
listening, listening. 

Nine o’clock struck. 

Still never a note. 

Half-past nine. 

I could bear it no longer. 

I knew now that I could not sleep till I 
had heard that Funeral March once again. 
Perhaps Miss Z. was not at home ! When 
this thought flashed across me I grew 
desperate, and summoned assistance. 

“ Mahry,” I said, “ is Miss Z. at home ? ” 

“ Yiss, sir,” said Mahry. (She now said 
“sir.”) 

“ Be so kind as to take her up this note, 
and to wait for the answer.” 

The note ran thus : 

“ The gentleman downstairs presents his compliments 
to the Lady on the Drawingroom floor. He would be 


24 


THE LADY ON THE 


greatly obliged if she would favour him with a repetition 
of Chopin’s Funeral March.” 

The answer descended after an interval 
that, measured by the clock, appeared short. 
It was written in pencil, in a clear, bold hand, 
that asked for plenty of paper. There were 
no stops of any kind, but the words were 
spaced so that the meaning was clear. 

The Lady on the Drawingroom floor presents her 
compliments and she will be happy to play Chopin’s 
Funeral March again if the Gentleman Downstairs will 
kindly mention the name of the hero in whose honour he 
would desire it played She cannot play it except in 
memory ” 

Here was a crux. I wondered whether the 
lady had an accurate mind. Her fingers 
were accurate enough ; but her ideas ? Was 
she the kind of person likely to have a 
Dictionary of Dates at hand ? I decided to 
risk it. There was no time to be lost. I 
have observed that women, even women who 
know about history, do not as a rule read the 
Peninsular War. 

‘‘To-day,” I wrote (Heaven and the Duke forgive me) 
“ is the anniversary of the death of the Fiery Crawford.” 


DEAWINGROOM FLOOR 


25 


For all I knew, it might just as well have 
been the anniversary of the death of Eobert 
Bruce, but I dared not risk that, for she 
might have been better acquainted with 
Eobert Bruce. Apparently she was satisfied, 
for, in a few minutes, a tremendous chord 
fell plump upon my ear. It was not Chopin, 
however. When I came to know that piano 
better, I learnt that it would never play the 
same air twice in succession. This was at 
once heavier and more electric ; it suggested 
to my mind a funeral among the hills 
and in the mist. I heard the drums all 
night long. 

The Lady on the Drawingroom floor and 
the gentleman downstairs were now on think- 
ing, rather than on speaking, terms with each 
other. We did not meet face to face. She 
had heard my voice — in contradiction. I was 
aware that she spoke with the refinement of a 
woman who reads, and with a certain quality 
of decision which proclaimed at once that she 
was born to be king. Her fingers were more 
eloquent than her lips. She told the piano 


26 


THE LADY ON THE 


what she thought, and the piano told me. 
I did not reason it out. I knew she felt as 
I did about those who have died worthily. 
From that time forward there was a link, 
forged by the dead, between us. Fearful of 
breaking it, of finding out that words could 
break a sympathy deeper than words, I had 
no wish to talk with her. It was to me as 
if she had known him whom of all others I 
counted dear. I did not care to be told what 
I knew very well, that she had never even 
heard his name. 

So far as I could make out, few people 
came to see Lucilla, but those who came 
stayed a long time. Sometimes I heard a 
bell ring and the door opened. An hour or 
more would pass before the door opened again ; 
and no bell rang in the meantime. 

I came to know, later on, that Lucilla 
never mingled nor confused her friends. It 
takes two to make one ; it takes three to make 
two ; in this sense she understood arithmetic. 
To say the same thing in another way, she 
had the precious gift of holding each friend 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


27 


in himself to be the only friend she possessed 
for the time being. Sensitive people are 
flattered thus — flattered even more succes- 
fully than they are flattered by other sweet 
women whose besetting virtue it is, to try and 
make every friend of theirs the friend of an 
earlier friend. 

I learnt also that she was not quite such 
a recluse as I at first imagined. Most likely 
I did not hear her play on the long dark 
evenings between Chopin’s Funeral March 
and the Funeral March Among the Mountains, 
because she was entertaining some one with 
the sound of his own voice, or because she 
had gone out to hear some one else talk. 
This explanation dawned on me at a large, 
unwieldy dinner-party in my cousin’s house, 
to which I went, because, an invited guest 
having failed, she came herself and com- 
manded my attendance in terms that did not 
admit of refusal. I was most unwilling to 
go. Suppose Lucilla took it into her head 
to play the Funeral March that evening ? But 
“ I want a man ! ” my cousin said, and bitter 


28 


THE LADY ON THE 


experience had taught me that my cousin — 
unlike her country — never wanted a man but 
she got one. 

The youngest daughter of the house, a tall, 
pale Maypole of sixteen summers, who had to 
be encouraged to take her proper part in 
society, fell to my share. I looked forward 
with dread to the innumerable little bits of 
meat and pudding which, by order of her 
Mamma, we should be compelled to accept 
or refuse together. I am very much of 
Hazlitt’s mind as regards a young girl. If 
she giggles, I detest her. If she is not shy, I 
do not like her. Shyness is the natural con- 
dition of a young girl, as it is of a fawn. At 
the same time I find her shyness dull and 
infectious. I do not know that any outside 
person could have made up his mind as to 
whether Frida was most afraid of me, or I 
of Frida. 

Having discussed soup, fish, and the first 
enMe in almost unbroken silence, Frida, 
moved, I fear, by the fact that from the 
end of the table, her mother “ gave her a 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


29 


look,” made a sudden determined frightened 
rush. 

“ Cousin Oliver,” she said, “ are you a 
Wagnerian ? ” 

She had heard a lecture by the distin- 
guished musical critic of The Times, it ap- 
peared, and she thought that the whole duty 
of a man was to be a Wagnerian. 

“ I think I must be a Wagnerian,” I said. 
“ I heard a Funeral March the other night, 
and it was not like any other funeral march 
I ever heard, so I suppose it was Wagner’s. 
Most certainly I admired it.” 

“Was it like this?” she asked, and she 
actually beat the drum on the table-cloth 
with her little unformed pink fingers. 

“ Yes,” I said encouragingly, “ it was Just 
like that.” 

In my heart I apologised to Lucilla as I 
spoke. 

“ Then it was Siegfried’s Funeral March,” 
she cried Joyfully. “ You heard it on the 
orchestra, of course.” 

“ No — a piano.” 


30 


THE LADY ON THE 


“ Who was playing ? ” 

“ Nobody that you know. A fellow lodger 
of mine, a Miss Z.” 

Frida’s expression changed in an instant. 

“ Oh, Miss Z.,” she cried, and broke ofi. 
It was as if she were lighting candles before a 
shrine and swinging incense. She asked no 
more questions. An intimation was conveyed 
to me, somehow or other, that I had uttered 
a name that was, in her eyes, too sacred for 
discussion; but she was attentive and kind 
throughout the evening only because I lived 
under one roof with Miss Z. 

After dinner the conversation turned again 
upon music. They never talked of anything 
else in that house, except dancing. 

“ Were you at the Pop last Saturday, Mrs. 
Hopgood?” enquired a fatuous dark young 
man, rather stout, with too many rings on, 
and eyes that were like bad rings. “ I heard 
your daughter mention Miss Z. at dinner. 
I saw her there. Awfully taking woman 
she is.” He broke off as though he could 
have said much more but that he was too 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 31 

far in Miss Z’s. confidence, or she too far 
in his. 

“ Charmin’ ! ” echoed a fair young fellow of 
whose prowess at cricket I had often heard. 
“ Met her at Lady Dartry’s the other night.” 

And he, too, broke off meditatively, as who 
should say, “ I know something about her ! ” 
or “ She knows something of the utmost 
importance about me.” 

I have heard my cousin assert, not without 
gentle malice, that she had begun to make 
a list of the gentlemen she met, each of whom 
wished it to be understood that he was the 
only intimate friend of Miss Z., and that in 
the course of a month the names ran up to 
forty. I can believe this, although my 
cousin’s statements are not always made 
upon oath. Lucilla gave to every one who 
crossed her threshold a sense of intimacy. 
She made no acquaintances ; either she did 
not know people at all, or she knew them 
well. The sense of intimacy, however, had 
nothing to do with what she said, and I 
doubt whether the visitors who went away 


32 


THE LADY ON THE 


well content knew her so well as they thought 
they knew her. She seldom either asked or 
answered questions, disdaining the cheap and 
obvious methods to which common minds 
have recourse in the effort to understand. 
She took the trouble to think over everyone 
in whom she felt interested, as if he had been 
a carpet, a wall-paper, or a piece of needle- 
work — with surprising results. 

Women varied more in their opinion of her 
than men. They were not spellbound like 
the young girls — like the weak members of 
the stronger sex; quite the reverse. 

“ Eather too fond of having her own way, 
don’t you think ? ” said my cousin. 

As Miss Z. lived by herself, I did not see 
whose way she could have had except her 
own. True, she might have had the land- 
lady’s way ! That she did not adopt, and the 
landlady had grown censorious in conse- 
quence. But the landlady caught a bad cold 
a few days before this dinner-party. Miss Z. 
(I heard it from my landlord, who was im- 
pressed with the quality of the dish) went 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


33 


down into the kitchen and made arrowroot 
for her. After that the landlady fell silent. 
This rather annoyed me at the time ; it was 
unlike the idea that I had formed of Lucilla 
that she should do anything useful, and there 
was too distinct a moral about it. I began 
to see in imagination regiments of ci-devant 
landladies who had “ seen better days ” 
marching up to receive flannel petticoats and 
packets of tea and sugar ; and I felt certain 
that I should have to give notice. I hate the 
Ministering Angel kind of woman. I like the 
flower, the star, the fancy. 

I was recalled from these meditations by 
the voice of my cousin as she stirred up the 
white cat with her foot. 

“ Is she well off ? ” 

“ I do not know. I should not think so, as 
she lives in Back Street.” 

“ She is very independent,” said my cousin, 
who likes to confer a benefit. “ Sir Simon 
Smear, who is, of course^ an E.A., recom- 
mended her to me as the best person he knew 
for copying miniatures. So I asked her to 
4 


34 


THE LADY ON THE 


do Aunt Sally — you know, Oliver, Aunt Sally 
with the red hair, who used to give us rice 
puddings on Sunday, because it was good for 
the complexion. She did it well, I daresay, 
but she took a long time over it, and her 
charges are enormous ; so I gave Uncle 
John to little Miss Twitter. It may not be 
quite such a pretty picture, but then Miss 
Twitter got it done in three days, and she 
was so pleased to be asked to stay to 
luncheon. It kills two birds with one stone, 
you know, because Miss Twitter is very poor. 
I am surprised to find that Miss Z. has so 
many acquaintances. I should hardly have 
thought she was in a condition to dine out.” 

Secretly I felt glad to learn that Miss Z. 
was independent. She might condescend to 
work now and then, because she liked to paint 
and could paint well; and if she did she 
would insist on proper remuneration. As I 
remembered the stately strains that floated 
down to me from the drawingroom floor, I 
could not think of her as a poor little 
harassed, down-trodden drudge like Miss 


DKAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


35 


Twitter. I had seen Miss Twitter, and I had 
seen Miss Twitter’s miniatures. 

“Her clothes are so peculiar,” the critic 
went on. 

“ Indeed ! Does she sport a turban ? ” 

“ Did you never see her ? ” 

“ I have not had that pleasure.” 

“ How odd, when you live in the same 
house ! Oh ! well, I daresay you would not 
have noticed anything! Men have no eyes.” 

This, by the way, is the only remark about 
men that all the women I know have con- 
curred in making. 

“ Tell me, my dear cousin, you who have 
such surpassing eyes, what it is that they see 
when they see Miss Z. ? ” 

“Oh, I can’t answer that kind of question!” 
said my cousin. “ She wears coral — and 
nobody wears coral nowadays. And a big 
cameo brooch, a Eoman cameo, the size of a 
frying-pan. And a little close bonnet that 
fits tight to the head. It’s very becoming; 
I daresay she trimmed it herself.” 

“ She is clever, then ? ” 


36 


THE LADY ON THE 


“ Oh, no, not in the least ! She did not 
even know where Wilton Place was when 
someone mentioned it the other day.” 

I pondered over Lucilla’s old-fashioned 
ornaments, over her coral and her cameo 
brooch, as I walked homewards. Inherited, 
of course. It seemed to me that she wore 
these things because she liked them. We 
have all our weaknesses ; I, nameless thing 
that I was, felt pleased to learn that Lucilla 
had a grandmother; that grandmother had 
had a grandmother, probably. 

The thought that Lucilla was poor — even 
the idea that she might be — was repellent. 
Surely the piano indicated wealth — unless, 
indeed, she was one of those, like myself, to 
whom certain luxuries are more necessary 
than the needful. Yet she could not be rich. 
No one would have lived in Back Street who 
was rich enough to live out of it. 

Perhaps she was merely playing at poverty. 
She was, perhaps, a great lady in hiding. It 
is an odd game to play at, but people do odd 
things for amusement, as they do odd things 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


37 


for money. So long as she was poor by her 
own will, it made no matter to me. There is 
all the difference in the world between chosen 
poverty and poverty that cannot be helped. 
When Francis of Assisi took Lady Poverty to 
wife, he was richer than the head of the 
Eothschild family; but poverty, when she is 
not treated as a lady, poverty unsought, 
unclaimed, struggled against, degrades the 
poor like some insidious illness of the brain. 

I speak of the only class of which I have 
personal knowledge — of the genteel poor ; not 
of those who are born and die in the slums. 
When I reflect on the life of these last, I am 
fllled with panic-stricken admiration — I am 
standing at the bar on the Day of Judgment, 
without defence. Their very vices put me to 
shame. 

Only drunk ? Only dishonest ? 

The Pharisee who saw a man going by to 
be hanged, and said to himself, “ There, but 
for the grace of Grod, goes John Bunyan ! ” 
had not eyes to see that the man who was 
going to be hanged was probably the better 


38 


THE LADY ON THE 


off of the two. He had no vanity, poor fellow, 
no ridiculous “ appearance ” to keep up in the 
eyes of his brother men ! 

The ideas of the genteel poor and of the 
poor who are not genteel are very different. 

The genteel poor do everything that they 
can to conceal their poverty, short of telling 
a lie in words. They will go out to dine to 
hide the fact that they have no dinner at all. 

I have done it myself. 

They will spend hours sitting in a cold, 
stuffy Museum, or tramping the streets, 
because they would rather people did not 
know that the coals have all but come to an 
end, and there is no money to buy more. 

I have done it myself. 

They shut themselves up in their poverty 
and make an excuse of it not to help others, 
when, if they were as rich as Croesus, they 
would not help. 

I have done it myself. 

But they will never tell a lie in words. 

Now the poor who are not genteel have no 
regard for truth in words. They look upon 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


39 


her as she is in love. They will say they 

are poorer than they are, if they see the 

slightest advantage in doing so. They have 
their want-of-all-things in common, they 
make an excuse of it to help each other 
everywhere. 

I could not nurse a foul, foul-tempered old 
woman for eight weeks, without ever taking 
my clothes ofi, any more than I could tell 
a lie to earn sixpence; but I am glad, and 

for the sake of humanity, I am proud to 

take the part of the hundreds of men and 
women who can, against myself — to own 
that this exaggerated love of literal truth is 
a poor thing as compared with the love of my 
neighbour. There is much about my neigh- 
bour in the Ten Commandments and little 
about truth, except as it concerns him. All 
virtue is involuntary. “ Here stand I, God 
help me, I can no otherwise ! ” It is virtuous 
to speak the truth — well and good ; but 
between the man who speaks the truth 
because he cannot help it, and the man 
who is the slave of others because he 


40 


THE LADY ON THE 


cannot help it, there is a great gulf 
fixed, although both are virtuous. The 
slave is on a higher level than the other. 
I cannot choose, the choice was never 
granted me. I follow the cold and blue 
star. Truth — not the red star of Love. I 
cannot follow another man’s nor he mine. 
I can, I must admire the beauty of his 
following ; but he does not enjoy my society, 
nor I his. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


41 


III 

/^NE day, when I came home from work, 
I found a tortoise on the hearth-rug. 
There it stood with its head straight out, 
as if it had stood there since the beginning 
of the world. 

Words fail me to describe my embarrass- 
ment. In silence, though not in tears, I 
gazed at it for some time. At last I poked 
it with my stick. 

The tortoise might have been stone-dead 
for all the notice that it took. Still I made 
no doubt that it was alive, horridly alive; 
if I ventured to read a book or write a 
letter, it would begin to crawl about. 

I sat down and watched it; but it did 
nothing at all. At last the situation became 
unendurable. I rang the bell. 


42 


THE LADY ON THE 


“Mahry!” I said, “where did that tor- 
toise come from ? ” 

Mahry shrank away towards the door with 
an expression of agony. 

“ Don’t you ask me for to touch it, sir! ” 
said Mahry in a smothered scream. “ I 
can’t abear them reptiles. I’d rather meet 
a lion any day. I couldn’t touch him, no, 
not with a pair of tongs — no, not if you 
was to offer me £,5, sir!” 

She took a corner of her apron, as if pre- 
pared for tears, and backed out of the door. 

Now Mahry was not in the least likely to 
meet a lion any day — nor did I wish her 
to remove the reptile with a pair of tongs — 
nor could I, in the state of my finances, 
have offered her £5 for this important service. 
Whether I should have taken it myself, had 
any one offered me so much on condition 
that I removed the tortoise, I do not know. 
My sentiments — bar the encounter with the 
lion — were exactly the same as those of 
Mahry. 

Still, helpless as she appeared to be, I felt 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


43 


myself obliged to recall her. I could not be 
left alone with that beast. 

“ Mahry,” I said, “ it is your fault. You 
must have left the door open when you 
brought in the tea ; otherwise this most 
untoward event would not have occurred. 
Whose is the tortoise ? ” 

“ Please, sir, it’s Miss Z.’s tortoise, sir, 
which she bought it off of a man in the street 
this morning, sir.” 

“Did she indeed? She hardly intended 
to make a present of it to me, I suppose. 
Is she at home ? ” 

“ Naow, sir.” 

Mahry was edging towards the door. 

It is all very well to have a musician on 
the drawingroom floor, but I had not the 
slightest desire to see a menagerie established 
there. 

“If Miss Z. cannot keep the tortoise up- 
stairs,” I observed, “ I shall give it back to 
the man in the street.” 

I wondered, as I spoke, whether it would 
be possible to find him before Miss Z. came 


44 


THE LADY ON THE 


home. There are so many men in the 
street, 

“ Yiss, sir,” said Mahry, getting still nearer 
the door. 

“ Kindly give her this note as soon as she 
returns,” I said, and indited the follow- 
ing 

gentleman doionstairs has received a 
visit from a Tortoise, which belongs, he is told 
on good authority, to the Lady on the Draw- 
ingroom floor. As he is not accustomed to 
receive Tortoises, he is unacquainted with the 
etiquette to he observed on such occasions. 
Would Miss Z. be so hind as to tell him what 
is the next move 1 For the Tortoise mahes 
none." 

Tea was impossible. I might, at any 
moment, find the thing on my knee. I 
took a book, sat down opposite it, and longed 
for the return of Miss Z. as a sleepless invalid 
for the approach of morning. I could not 
read. Once I began ; but the tortoise put its 
head out a little further. I tried to write 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


45 


a letter ; but then the tortoise drew its head 
back. 

I began to wonder how old it was, 

I remembered, under a glass case at Lam- 
beth, certain remains of a venerable tortoise 
that had played with Archbishop Laud. This 
present tortoise now before me might have 
heard the voice of Strafford at Whitehall. 
Eupert of the Ehine might have stroked its 
back ; it had, perhaps, accepted a dandelion 
from the white hand of Henrietta Maria, I 
did not suppose it had anything to do with 
the Puritans. Tortoises are, I feel sure, Eras- 
tian and cavalier. 

In the midst of these reflections I heard a 
key turn, and the front door opened. 

Miss Z. had a latch-key, then, a boon con- 
stantly denied to me since I lost the three 
first and refused to pay a pound for the fourth. 
There was a momentary pause. Mahry, no 
doubt, was presenting my note. The next 
instant Miss Z. might be upon me. I had 
never thought of that. I was beginning to 
feel that even the society of the tortoise 


46 


THE LADY ON THE 


might be less embarrassing, when I heard her 
go calmly along the hall and up the stairs. 

If I had been alarmed lest she should come, 
I was now twice as much alarmed lest she 
should not. I could not spend the evening 
with that creature. I made up my mind that 
I should go out to dine. 

Suddenly, however, Mabry reappeared, 
grim, determined, armed with a black tea- 
tray. 

“ Well ? ” 

“ Miss Z. says I’m to bring the ’orrible 
reptile upstairs at onest,” said Mahry, in a 
voice which convinced me that she would 
have laid her now tidy head on the block in 
a second, if Miss Z. had required it. 

She put the tray down on the rug, and 
proceeded to urge the tortoise on to it by the 
application of the shovel behind. He stood 
upon the order of his going, but go he did. 
I dare be sworn he went upstairs much faster 
than he came down. Once he had crossed 
the Eubicon, and was safely landed on the 
tray, Mahry dropped the shovel as if it had 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


47 


been red-hot, and fled to the Drawingroom 
floor as though a policeman were at her heels. 

A note came to hand flve minutes later. 

“ The Lady on the D^’awingroom floor regrets 
that Barnahy Budge should have caused the 
Gentleman Downstairs inconvenience She will 
Ttnow better how to restrain him in future ” 

She kept her word. Rudge never darkened 
my doors again. 

It was long, however, before I got over a 
nervous fear that he might. 

Some time after, having been without news 
for a longer period than usual, I inquired 
what had become of him. 

“ He has disappeared,” said Lucilla. “ Tor- 
toises always do. I have had three, and they 
all disappeared.” 

This comforted me, and I inquired no 
further. 

It seemed appropriate. Barnaby Rudge 
could not have taken such a definite step as 
to die. No ; like many a tyrant before him, 
he “ disappeared.” 


48 


THE LADY ON THE 


Lucilla showed, on this occasion, all the 
kindly indifference that has often amazed 
me in people who devote themselves to pets. 
They will behave as if the adored object were 
the only thing in life that deserved their 
affection; they will sacrifice their own com- 
fort and the comfort of others remorselessly, 
to attend to its lightest want; but when it 
“ disappears ” they accept the fact with a 
philosophy for which their previous warmth 
has not prepared one. Their very sympathy 
with animals gives them, I believe, a touch 
of the indifference of animals over the inevit- 
able. I do not forget that Sir Walter Scott 
refused to dine out on the night of his dog’s 
death ; and I have myself seen Lucilla unable 
to speak when — but I anticipate. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


49 


IV 

jj'i OK a few days after the Kudge Raid there 
was peace. 

Often of an evening Lucilla talked to the 
piano, and the piano talked to me. I used to 
wonder afterwards what it was that she said — 
I wondered what she looked like as she said it. 

If I myself could have remained unseen, I 
should have wished to see her. She was, I 
fancied, small, fair, dignified as becomes the 
little women who rule ; alarmingly, yet rather 
charmingly reserved. 

Complexion — ivory, stained with faint rose- 
leaf. Eyes — blue, Irish gray, something 
between ; — 

“ Eyes too expressive to be blue, 

Too lovely to be gray/’ 

Well-plaited hair, and plenty of it. I have 
5 


50 


THE LADY ON THE 


not the indifEerenoe professed by Benedick as 
to the colour of a lady’s hair. Black hair is 
disagreeable to me ; there should be nothing 
black about a lady. If it had pleased Heaven 
that her hair should be black, I could not 
but feel disappointed. 

I was pondering over her appearance one 
afternoon when a loud and very hoarse voice, 
a dreadful travesty of my own, said, close 
to my ear, “ Mahry, shut the door ! ” 

There, on the back of my chair, sat a little 
green parrot, and, without any more ado, he 
walked on to my shoulder, where he began 
to sing “ Tom Bowling’s gone aloft.” 

“I’ll not have you calling me Mahry, nor 
Tom Bowling neither. You’ll go aloft your- 
self— and very shortly! ” I said with decision ; 
and marched upstairs, taking no time to 
consider. 

If I had hesitated one moment, I should 
have been lost, but the firm grasp of the 
parrot’s claws, rooted in my coat, gave me 
confidence, and I knocked at the first door on 
the landing. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


51 


“ Come in ! ” said the voice there was no 
disobeying : and I turned the handle. 

That is a strange moment when we see for 
the first time one at whom we have looked 
hitherto with the eye of the mind alone. I 
remained dumb. She was not in the least 
what I expected. 

She was tall — taller than myself. She was 
pale, not as those are whose roses have faded, 
but as those who are born under an alien star. 
She was dark, and her hair — black hair — 
curved like a shell as it rose on either side 
above her great calm forehead. She had large 
dark eyes. Whether they were softer than 
they were deep — deeper than they were soft, I 
never knew ; they had not the penetrating 
look that makes one so uncomfortable in the 
presence of some women. She never seemed 
to be reading her interlocutor as if, faute de 
mieux, she were reading a book. There was 
distance in her eyes ; they appeared to be 
resting on things beautiful exceedingly, but 
far, far away. Whether the image reflected 
in them were of the past or of the future, who 


52 


THE LADY ON THE 


could tell ? Of both perhaps ; for what was 
will be. 

Thus she stood for an instant, gazing. But 
when she really saw the sight before her there 
was a sudden change, the change that conies 
on water ruffled by the wind. She did not 
laugh aloud, but she covered her face with her 
hands, and her stately form shook. 

There is nothing (except fear) more in- 
fectious than laughter. We laughed in com- 
pany — we laughed for several minutes before 
a word was spoken. After that she made a 
perch of her finger, coaxed the little parrot 
away, put him back in his cage, and thanked 
me as well as she could for laughter. 

“It is a great mistake to have pets,” she 
said, “ especially other people’s. You never 
know what they are after. Still, I think I 
can promise that they will not annoy you for 
the next half-hour at any rate ; they will be 
too busy eating and drinking. We are all 
going to drink tea together. Will you not 
take a cup with us, to show that you bear no 
malice ? ” 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


53 


Therewith she lifted down from a shelf a 
pretty, half-transparent cup and saucer. 

“ I dust them every day,” she said apologeti- 
cally, and we sat down. 

Katerfelto was purring over a saucer of 
milk. Barnaby Eudge was sucking out of 
another, the parrot waddled down ofi his perch 
and began to eat bread and milk from a 
Japanese bowl. Where a cat, a bird, a 
tortoise, and a woman, were all comfortable 
together, why should not a man be happy too ? 

He was. 

A quiet sensation of well-being stole over 
me, so soon as I felt myself one of their 
company. 

The light, bright, airy room was the perfect 
expression of the taste of one person, and that 
person a lady. 

Over and over again I have seen a charming 
room spoilt because too many people have been 
permitted to adorn it. Unity — purpose — re- 
pose — are frittered away by crowds of photo- 
graphs — the last new baby of the last great 
friend — the girl the husband’s brother is 


54 


THE LADY ON THE 


engaged to — Sarah Bernhardt dressed as a 
man — Dan Leno dressed as a woman — the 
gloomy brows of Kitchener — the amiable 
tightness of “ Bobs,” Luoilla had no photo- 
graphs in public. In private she had many, 
but she kept them in a heart-shaped box, 
covered with blue linen, and suffered no eyes 
but her own to rest on them, except by special 
favour. To my mind, she honoured the 
originals with more delicacy by this exclusive 
preference. She would not, could not expose 
them to the common light of day, nor bare the 
features that she loved to the chance criticism, 
the flighty admiration of a casual visitor. She 
did not even think that she herself was always 
in a flt mood to behold them. She observed 
times and seasons. 

One photograph, however, she displayed, 
“ The Unknown,” Painter Unknown, from 
the Louvre ; and she displayed it in the post 
of honour, over the fire. There he hung, 
his eyes full of affection and unrest, his lips 
disdainful, every inch of his odd face contra- 
dicting every other inch of it. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


55 


What kind of man was he, I wondered ? 
Why did Lucilla care to have that face — of 
all the faces in the world — before her ? 

He was not all of one piece, I think. His 
virtues would have despaired, had it not been 
for his vices; and his vices would have had 
it all their own way, had it not been that, 
“when he wandered here and there, he then 
went most aright.” 

“ You know many things,” I said once to 
Lucilla. “ But even you do not know whether 
that fellow is in Heaven or in Hell.” 

“ He is not in Heaven now, but he will 
be ! ” she replied with earnestness. 

I laughed. 

“ You speak as if you meant to meet him 
there.” 

“I do ! ” she said, still in the same serious 
tone. 

We held this conversation long after our 
first interview, at a time when she went 
often to the National Gallery under my 
escort. 

“ I bet you my Tintoretto — if I had it — to 


56 


THE LADY ON THE 


your Fra Angelico — if you had it — he is in 
Hell. The mouth is bad.” 

“ The eyes are good,” she said. She was 
looking at me as she spoke, not at the portrait. 

“ Character shows most in the mouth. Our 
other features are kind to us, and keep the 
secret. But the mouth is the traitor; and 
the mouth, I repeat, is bad.” 

“ You have no call to abuse it,” she rejoined. 
“ It is very like your own.” 

To which, of course, there was no answer 
When I reached the seclusion of my bed- 
room, I consulted a looking-glass, and found 
to my disgust that she was right. 

No other face, whether of man or woman, 
adorned her walls. 

Nor was there any sketch, picture, or photo- 
graph that could, by any possibility, be made 
to bear the title of The Old Home. 

On one wall hung a print; a long, long 
avenue of thin, tall trees, such as are to be 
seen in the North of Prance, an avenue that 
led straight on to the sky. Beside the mantel- 
piece hung a tiny sketch of a bit of bough, a 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


57 


bird with outstretched wings, and — far below 
— the sea. Unless she were an angel or a 
mermaid, it would have been rash to come to 
any conclusion from these as to the place 
of Lucilla’s origin. 

The space at her command was doubled by 
an oval mirror in a frame of carved woodwork. 
There was a motto underneath, but I took 
many months to decipher it in the old, un- 
familiar lettering. Hier c'est demain it ran. 
What had that mirror reflected yesterday ? 

In the centre of the mantelpiece, opposite 
the round mirror, there stood a bronze statuette 
of Charles George Gordon, the counterpart of 
that which I possessed. I recognised it with 
a feeling of pleasure, but without surprise — as 
if I had known all along that it must be there. 

When I went back to my own apartment, it 
seemed bare and stupid by comparison, want- 
ing alike in definite meaning and in suggestion 
of the world without. It was also very dusty. 
Lucilla’s looked as if she dusted it morning 
and evening. I have no doubt she did. Mahry 
is not fond of dusting. I myself am not so 
fond of dusting as Mahry. 


58 


THE LADY ON THE 


V 


OU will come to tea with me again, this 



day week ! ” Luoilla had said, without 
a note of interrogation in her voice, when I 
rose to take leave. I cannot recollect whether 
I made any answer. That seemed unnecessary. 
She decided the matter as she decided every 
affair, great or little, within her ken ; and it 
became a custom that I should drink two cups 
of tea and eat one piece of bread-and-butter 
and two of cake on the Drawingroom floor of 
a Thursday. Habit makes half the pleasure 
of meeting ; and Luoilla knew this. An occa- 
sional visit is a duty to be discharged, but one 
paid regularly becomes agreeable, even if it 
was mere duty in the first instance ; how much 
more when the first step cost nothing but a 
laugh ? 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


59 


I began to find the study of my neighbour 
one of the pleasantest studies imaginable. 

For many years I had cared little about 
society. The memory of the one friend I had 
never lost, even by death, was company 
enough for me. 

My lameness sets me at a disadvantage 
among sportsmen and athletes — the dryness 
and shyness of my manner is, I have often 
thought, repugnant to scholars and men of 
taste. 

Even if I could move about as others do, I 
doubt that I should have had the strength of 
mind to fish or to shoot. I should have been 
the salmon, plunging and dashing in his efforts 
to escape; I should have been the fluttering 
wounded bird, the terrified hare. I have en- 
joyed a fight now and then. I enjoyed very 
keenly the fight in which I was lamed for life ; 
but I cannot enjoy a struggle in which I am 
myself on the weaker side. I have seen, now 
and then, a human being look out of the eyes 
of an animal — as I have seen that more 
dreadful thing, an animal looking out of the 


60 


THE LADY ON THE 


eyes of a human creature. It is perhaps 
because I am weaker in body than a man 
should be, that anything yet weaker always 
seems to me like a woman. I have none of 
the huntsman’s instinct concerning Woman 
neither. I have seen men who regarded her 
as a superior kind of game ; and I have seen 
her look upon them as huntsmen — whom she 
could sometimes hunt. It filled me with inex- 
plicable shame. Diana must hunt, I suppose, 
though I would rather she did not ; but all the 
laws of forestry are against our hunting Diana. 

Why I should care to defend Woman in 
this way, I know not. Strength for strength, 
some women are stronger than the strongest 
men. Lucilla was one of these. 

At first I only saw her quality in negatives. 
She was never in extremis. She did not say 
“ Good gracious ! ” when “ Dear, dear ! ” 
would do just as well. She neither scolded 
nor complained. She controlled enthusiasm 
as if it were a spirited horse that must not 
be allowed to run away with her. She ruled 
her ardent sympathies iu the same way ; aud 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


61 


thus she kept herself from entangling the 
threads of the many friendships that she 
held in her hand. 

She did not surprise me much ; but she 
surprised me constantly in little things. 

On the second Thursday when she did me 
the honour to invite me, we sat long over 
the tea-table in the long, late spring twilight. 
During the pause that followed on some 
remark of mine that gave her reason to 
meditate, I suddenly became aware of a 
little fat hand resting on the coverlet of 
the sofa. Something beneath it stirred, it 
was thrust lower down, there lay revealed 
a babe of about three years old, so sound 
asleep that I had not noticed her from the 
time I came in. 

A cat — a tortoise — a parrot — and now a 
baby: what should I find living in that 
room next ? Whose baby could it be ? The 
creature was pretty enough ; but I felt 
instant disapproval. 

Lucilla, who is quick to detect any change 
in a companion, looked round and smiled. 


62 


THE LADY ON THE 


“ It’s only little ’Liza ! ” she said defen- 
sively. “I call her Betsinda — Betty for 
short ; and when she is a very good girl, 
Tricksy Wee. She’s the landlady’s little 
niece. I don’t encourage her. I am not 
fond of children. But she has taken a kind 
of fancy to me. She crept upstairs all by 
herself, and, of course I could not turn her 
away. She was sitting by my side on a 
stool, looking at pictures, for an hour before 
you came. She is as good as gold, I must 
say that for her, but she got drowsy, so I 
just laid her down to sleep her sleep out. 
Her Aunt will come to fetch her presently, 
and take her home.” 

“ How very dreadful for her to have an 
aunt like that ! ” I observed. 

“Not at all!” said Lucilla. “The land- 
lady likes her better than anything else in 
the world.” 

For my own part, I felt certain that the 
tiresome baby would wake up and scream. 
It did nothing of the kind, however, and 
in a few minutes I had forgotten its exis- 


DKAWINGEOOM FLOOR 


63 


tence. On the whole it caused less inter- 
ruption than the parrot; and at any rate it 
did not crawl like the tortoise. 

“A wonderfully good child!” I said, as I 
rose to depart. 

“ Children are not naughty with me,” said 
Lucilla. “I don’t make a fuss with them.” 
And tenderly she laid the little hand, that 
had grown cold, under the coverlet. 

In the solitude of my room downstairs, I 
wondered why she had no children of her own. 

She said she did not like them, it is true, 
but — though she was a woman of her word — 
if ever I saw Theory go one way and Practice 
another, I saw it now. In theory she did 
not like pets any better than children. She 
had only taken care of Katerfelto because 
it was a public disgrace to see such a 
neglected looking animal about the house. 
She had only bought the tortoise because 
the man had too many tortoises on his 
cart, and there was no room for them to 
move, and she chanced to have a shilling 
in her pocket. There was some other 


64 


THE LADY ON THE 


explanation — I forget what — of the parrot. 
He belonged to a friend who did not under- 
stand him, I believe. Betty, of course, 
explained herself. I did not wonder that 
she came upstairs. 

She seemed to have no relations ; that was 
another thing I liked about Lucilla, though 
I found it hard to understand, because, in 
the rest of my experience, women of large 
sympathy have been women with large 
families. She was never full of satisfac- 
tion because dear Tom’s wife had got a 
little boy — never mournful and abstracted 
because Hetty’s fifth daughter looked white 
and thin, and nobody could make out what 
was the matter. She pursued the even 
tenour of her way, quite unaffected by 
domestic incident of any kind. 

Nor did she adopt a whole parish instead 
of a family, as many single women do. 
“ All the world is my parish ! ” Wesley 
said ; and I have often thought “ My 
parish is all the world ! ” must be their 
motto. She did not take a motherly 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 65 

interest in telegraph boys, in Deep Sea 
fishermen, in cinder-sifters, in the inhabi- 
tants of Sierra Leone. She disclaimed a 
motherly interest in anybody or anything. 
Somehow or other, animals and children 
insisted on making her their mother. She 
always carefully assured me that it was 
not her fault. 

She had an almost morbid horror of 
official charity, and I have it on her own 
authority that she seldom gave more than 
twopence in church. 

“ Money is a hard thing,” I heard her 
say once. “ It does more harm than good 
unless you wrap it up in soft words — or a 
warm Jacket — or something to eat and drink. 
It is only a stone itself — not bread — not 
anything a man can live on.” 

Her ideas about time were as unconven- 
tional as her ideas about money. 

She did more, and she did what she did 
more thoroughly than anybody, man or 
woman, whom I have known. Yet she was 
always at leisure. She seemed to keep a 
6 


66 


THE LADY ON THE 


private supply of time on hand. She 
laughed once about a motto that she had 
seen over a olookmaker’s shop, “ Time is 
Money.” The clockmaker did not take the 
responsibility of it; he put the name of 
Gamphell underneath. 

“ To think that anyone can talk such 
nonsense!” she said, “let alone the man 
who wrote ‘The Battle of the Baltic.’ 
People who have time never have money. 
All the rich people hurry and hurry from 
morning to night. Why, even I might 
have money if I had no time ! ” 

“ Time is thought,” I said, “ but it cannot 
be thought and it cannot be money, both 
at the same moment. And you want time 
to think, more than you want money.” 

“ Time is tea-time,” she rejoined. “ I 
want my tea, and so do you.” 

For a woman who delighted in thought, she 
was oddly shy about talking of it. 

“ I like to talk over the thoughts of other 
people. I always feel as if I were telling 
lies about my own,” she said. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


67 


Dull talk put her out. She did not think 
it in the least worth while to talk of any 
thing dull. 

“Life is short,” she said. “I have no 
time for kettle-holders.” 

An instance of a theory long held by me, 
that proverbs are the invention of Woman, 
on the spur of the moment. They must 
generalise ; to them nothing is unrelated. 
I wondered that she thought life short. 
To me it appeared long — not that I wished 
it shorter. 

When she went out, it was not so much 
her talk that I missed as her music — and 
above all, her silence. The other women 
whom I know are ceaselessly occupied. 
Their heads must be working, or their 
hands. They must have something to show 
for the time spent. Lucilla insisted on 
large clear spaces of doing nothing. She 
would scarcely answer some remark of mine, 
but she would sit still, brooding, and at 
the end of many moments there shone into 
my mind a light that came from hers. For 


68 “ 


THE LADY ON THE 


the most part she compelled me to answer 
my own questions, though how she did this 
I hardly know — oftener by a look or a 
gesture than by any words, I think. 

Those great brown eyes of hers — and mine 
— were made upon a different pattern; and, 
though we might be sitting side by side, 
one always saw what the other did not. 

** That inner eye, 

Which is the bliss of solitude” 

was in her so clear and direct that, with 
her outer eyes, she scarcely saw at all. 

“ Dante is your favourite poet, is he not ? ” 
I enquired one evening. 

“ How did you know ? I never let a day 
pass without a few lines of The Divine 
Comedy,” she rejoined ; not as if she were 
surprised, but rather glad. 

Few things astonished her, yet she was full 
of wonder and reverent admiration. There 
were times when I thought some strange 
experience in early life must have left her 
cold to all passing events ever after. She 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


69 


kept her marvelling for children — for the 
old and the poor — for heroic people. At 
the call of any of these it awoke. I feel 
sure that in this characteristic lay the 
secret of her power to confer repose. 

“Be that wonders shall reign, and he that 
reigns shall rest” 

“You care for Dante,” I said, “because 
everywhere in this world he saw the next. 
Earth to him, is not earth ; it is Hell, 
Purgatory, Heaven.” 

“I suppose you care more for Shakespeare 
than for any other poet,” she said with a 
sigh. 

“ How did you know ? ” 

“ People always care for one of those two 
poets more than for the other. We are 
only grown-up children ; one child likes 
Hans Andersen better than Grimm, and 
another likes Grimm the best. They are 
never equally fond of both. You have read 
Dante through, and I have not done that, 
but you do not read him every day as 
I do.” 


70 


THE LADY ON THE 


This was true. She still looked mournful. 

“Why do not you read Shakespeare every 
day? Shakespeare understood women.” 

“ He never cared for any woman as Dante 
cared for Beatrice.” 

There she was right, perhaps. Yet her 
opinion was not founded on study. She 
would take a tragedy or a comedy, and 
think, in one afternoon, that she had done 
with it. 

In the earlier days of our friendship I 
used to speculate as to her origin, as to 
her history. I did not think that she came 
from the North, nor yet from the East. 
She had no liking for cold winds and frost ; 
in the warmth of a soft, wet day she would 
open out like a flower. I could not but 
believe that she had been born in the 
West, where women are tall, gracious, 
brown-eyed, and the many golden sunsets 
of their childhood give them a serenity that 
is not lost in after life. She had lived in a 
spacious home, I thought, among loaded 
apple-trees, close to the blue sea, where 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


71 


September, lingering, crests the hedges with 
foam of honeysuckle. I often wondered at 
the space that she gave to her little room. 
I believed that it held within its narrow walls 
much larger, airier rooms ; in some strange 
way she made me feel as if I sat or moved 
in them when I was with her. Yet there 
was never any word — nor the slightest 
allusion. 

Was the past then indifferent to her ? 
Had she banished all connected with it ? 
Did she exist, “ the day to the day,” without 
a memory ? Or was it, like my own, woven 
and tangled in with the present, so much a 
part of the tissue of every hour, that it could 
no more be spoken of than those fleeting, 
intimate sensations that we cannot make 
known even to a friend till they are well 
behind us ? 

The weeks had two days in them now, 
Sunday and Thursday. On Sunday Lucilla 
played — on Thursday I went to tea with 
Lucilla. She played on other nights ; but 


THE LADY ON THE 


. 72 

on Sunday she played for me, and there was 
often, “ by special request,” a Funeral March. 

Spring became summer, and summer 
autumn, and autumn winter, and winter 
spring again; and this not once but twice. 

I began to note the seasons more than I 
had noted them formerly, because I gave my 
friend Lucilla flowers. To speak by the 
book I gave her one flower, and one flower 
only. I never thought anything but a rose 
was good enough. In the winter, when roses 
were scarce, I gave her a bunch of them. 
In the summer, when there were many, I 
gave her one. She was no more indis- 
criminate in her love of flowers than in her 
love of human beings. She did not fill 
anything that came to hand with masses of 
this, that, and the other, jumbled up anyhow. 
She chose a delicate bowl or cup ; a small, 
fanciful vase — she set them in the best light 
— against the looking-glass — she played with 
every blossom as a child plays with a toy. 
I always thought that flowers lived longer 
in her room than anywhere else. I said so 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 73 

to her once, and she replied in the prosiest 
way that it was because she took the trouble 
to cut a little piece of the stem off, to slit 
it at the bottom, to put a scrap of charcoal 
into the fresh water that she gave them to 
drink every morning. I felt sorry that she 
made the mistake of telling me this. Why 
should she give me rational explanations 
of things that seemed to me romantic ? 
Afterwards I let such incidents alone, and 
enjoyed the sense of mystery. 

Many are the subtle differences between 
men and women. I had always understood 
this in the grand sense. In fact, until I 
knew Lucilla, I should as soon have thought 
of making a friend of a Parsee. Women 
are Fire-Worshippers. This is the great 
difference : but now, for the first time, I 
began to know the difference there may be 
in little things as well as great. 

A woman, for instance, will be friends with 
you, year in, year out, and never feel the 
need of defining you by any name at all. 
With me it is otherwise. A dull crystal- 


74 


THE LADY ON THE 


lization of feeling impels me to name my 
friend always in absence, occasionally in 
presence. I cannot get on without a name. 
I used to wish that I had earned the right 
to call her as I chose, not as the whole world 
called her. I cannot help thinking that she 
divined this — that when she spoke of it, she 
was uttering my thoughts rather than her own. 

“ I wash,” she said one day, “that we had 
individual names for each other. We are 
not the same to every person that we meet. 
What do you call me when you are by 
yourself ? I am sure you do not call me 
Miss Z.” 

“Why should you think that I am so 
deficient in respect as to call you anything 
else?” 

“You say it awkwardly whenever you have 
to say it — as if you had forgotten — or were 
trying to remember. Confess ! You call 
me something else ? ” 

“ I call you Lucilla" I said, straight out. 
“I called you Lucilla before I ever saw 
you.” 


DEAWINGEOOM ELOOE 


75 


She looked surprised — not disagreeably 
surprised. 

“ Why ? ” 

“ I can invent a reason if you like,” I said. 

She laughed. 

“ If you had given me one, I should not 
have cared. But will you not call me Lucilla 
always? I have no objection to answer to 
the name, now that I know it. And frankly. 
The Lady on the Drawingroom floor, every 
time you write a note is becoming tiresome.” 

“ Must I be always The gentleman 
downstairs ? ” 

“ Always! ” returned Lucilla, with precision. 


76 


THE LADY ON THE 


VI 

“ -p^ iTTY is coming,” Luoilla said one 
evening. 

“ Who is Kitty ? ” I asked, vaguely alarmed. 
“ Is she another oat ? ” 

Lucilla’s low, clear laugh murmured round 
the room. 

“ No, Kitty is just — Kitty. I will not tell 
you what she is like. You shall judge for 
yourself. She will be here the next time 
that you come.” 

“ Oh, will she ? ” said I. “ Then I intend 
to make the most of the time without 
her.” 

And I talked about something else. 

As I was going away, however, my fears 
returned upon me in full force. 

“ Only tell me one thing,” I said. “ Kitty 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


77 


won’t be here always — she is not going to 
live in the house ? ” 

“No,” said Lucilla evasively, “not in 
the house.” 

She was going to be here always then. 

Of course Lucilla had every right to avail 
herself of the company of Kitty, if the 
company of Kitty was what she desired. 
Nevertheless I felt aggrieved. 

Kitty is coming! I pondered again over 
the words, over the tone in which they had 
been said. There was something like girlish 
delight, a kind of triumph in them, as if 
the coming of Kitty were almost too good 
to be true. From my heart I wished that 
she were not coming. Girls are pretty 
things, but they are hopeless for purposes 
of conversation. They live in the shining of 
their own eyes, in their singing voices, and 
in their dancing feet, but they have no 
experience of life at all. Why cannot 
people be satisfied ? “ Toujours le mieux 

est Vennemi du Men" We were very well, 
as it seemed to me, Lucilla was quite happy. 


78 


THE LADY ON THE 


Why should she care about this girl? But 
she had spoken in such a way that I could 
not forget it, and all day, every day, when- 
ever I chanced to be alone, I heard the 
mockery in my ear, Kitty is coming. 

At last she came ; and I drew breath 
again. There was nothing to be afraid of, 
Lucilla would not prefer her company to 
mine. 

“Well?” inquired Lucilla, when we had 
all drunk tea together and Kitty was gone. 
She went soon after tea, whether by instinct 
or by arrangement I did not know at the 
time. I feel sure now that it was by instinct. 

“ She is plain,” I said. 

“ Is she ? ” 

“ She is rather dull.” 

“ Is she? ” said Lucilla, still more markedly. 

“ She seems to me to be just like any 
other girl.” 

“ Oh ! ” said Lucilla. 

The quiet depth of her disagreement 
annoyed me. 

When, however, I saw Kitty again, a 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


79 


week later, I began, to my own surprise, to 
disagree with myself. At the end of three 
weeks I felt bound in honesty to let Kitty’s 
protectress know that I had changed my 
opinion. 

“ Very uncommon,” I remarked, in a 
tentative manner. 

“ She is not at all pretty,” said Lucilla 
regretfully, as if she wished to be contra- 
dicted, but felt it impossible. “ You are 
right about that. I wish she were more 
like her mother. And yet ” — was it my 
fancy that Lucilla’s voice softened a little ? 
“ I was so much pleased to see the likeness 
to her father — he is the one I know best, 
you see, that I never noticed it is not pretty 
until you said so.” 

“ She is very graceful. Her voice is 
charming. I have never seen any other 
girl at all like her.” 

I thought it best to give way all along 
the line — to attempt no reserves. 

Lucilla smiled. 

“ What are you laughing at ? ” 


80 


THE LADY ON THE 


“ Shall I tell you what Kitty said of you, 
the first time that she saw you ? ” 

“ Certainly, if you think it will give me 
pleasure.” 

“ ‘ Auntie,’ she said, ‘he has pale eyes like 
a- fish, and I thought he was deaf and dumb.’ 
But last night she informed me that you 
must have looked like Eaphael’s Portrait of 
Himself when you were young, and that you 
were quite different from any other man she 
had ever met.” 

“ Miss Kitty and I are going to be excel- 
lent friends. I can see that.” 

“ I hope so,” said Lucilla demurely. 

“We began with being excellent enemies — 
a very good beginning of friendship between 
people of different ages,” I said. “ And now 
that I have made up my mind about her, be 
so kind as to tell me who is she.” 

“Her mother comes from the border 
country up North, and her father from' 
Orleans. The aunt with whom I used to 
live down in Cornwall (I never knew my own 
father and mother) gave him a start in life. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


81 


He had a turn for mechanics, but no money. 
Now he owns a mill in Yorkshire and gets 
on well there. He is an old friend of mine. 
I promised that I would see something of his 
child. She likes to play and sing — she has 
come up to London for a year at the Koyal 
College of Music. The mother is a malade 
imaginaire — a very sweet woman and all that, 
but rather helpless — not able to go about with 
Kitty. They thought she would be quite 
happy, lodging next door to me, and so she is, 
dear child ! I shall get her to play to you.” 

“ How does she play ? ” 

“Not at all in the style of the Funeral 
March.” 

“ I shall not like it then.” 

“ You ought to beware of rash statements 
by this time,” Lucilla said. 

I have often thought a piano one of the 
strangest things in the world. If it did not 
stand solid and square in every drawingroom, 
should we cease to wonder at the magic box 
that holds within itself so many diff erent 
voices ? When Lucilla’s piano spoke for 
7 


82 


THE LADY ON THE 


Kitty, I could hardly believe that the actual 
material, wooden keys, the metal strings 
were the same. An elf, I think, had got 
inside and changed it all. 

Kitty preferred to play “ out of her head,” 
as she called it. Hers was the one gift that 
Lucilla lacked — invention ; it came naturally 
to her to extemporise rather than to read or 
to remember. She neither could nor would 
play anything at any other person’s sugges- 
tion. She embroidered the air around her 
with fanciful grotesques of sound that were, 
now beautiful exceedingly, now odd to the 
verge of absurdity. Sometimes this delighted, 
sometimes it rather distressed Lucilla. 

“Her sense of time is not good. And I 
don’t think she practises her scales enough,” 
she observed one day. 

I smiled in my turn ; for I knew that it 
was not in Kitty to practise her scales. 

There as she sits at the piano — the only 
place in the world in which she ever, for 
one minute, could sit still, let me draw her. 

I have tried again and again for my own 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


83 


satisfaction, not with any success — never, to 
speak truth, with the hope of it, but because 
there are certain tasks that attract by virtue 
of impossibility. 

As there are some women who cannot be 
painted with colours, there are others who 
cannot be described in words. Colour and 
words suggest something too definite, too 
strong, too much finished. All the while I 
am writing a critic is contradicting me ; and 
I know (women are women’s critics) that she 
is as right as I am. 

But that the music her little slender hands 
are making sways Kitty gently to and fro 
like a breeze, the wand-like figure would be 
almost prim in its unrounded, youthful 
straightness. 

“ Too thin ! ” the critic says. 

Her hair is like the back of a thrush in 
colour, soft it may be, but not shining, nor 
very abundant, and she brushes it up into a 
bird-like crest. 

The forehead ? 

“ Low,” the critic says. 


84 


THE LADY ON THE 


Her eyes are grey — and not a pretty grey — 
too mouse-like, one of them has a speck of 
brown. I shall leave out her nose and her 
mouth — the first because I cannot remember 
it, the last because I remember it too well. 

A plague upon this inventory of her features ! 

When I wished to please Lucilla, I used to 
say she was a pocket Gainsborough that had 
not quite succeeded. If that cunning artist 
had taken it into his head to paint a minia- 
ture, he might have given the stiff, maidenly 
grace, the unconscious candour of some 
transient attitude that betrayed the elfin 
spirit. But he must have caught her upon 
the wing ; she could never have sat to him, 
she could no more sit still than a bird, and 
when she sang, it was as a bird sings, 
clearly, sweetly, without a note of passion. 
I apologise for speaking thus to the nightin- 
gale, Borneo of birds, but Kitty had nothing 
of the nightingale. The lark was her fellow. 

From the first she put her foot down on the 
Funeral Marches. 

“ No, no. Auntie,” she said. “ Don’t play 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


85 


that, it’s too sad. It makes me think of 
all the dead people. I don’t know them. 
Nobody I loved has died. Nobody shall.” 

Something in her frightened voice, her 
frightened eyes, made me turn away. 

“ Darling,” Lucilla said, “ that’s not the 
way to think of it. They are not dead really. 
They are more living than we are.” 

But Kitty was not to be persuaded. For 
my part I had more sense than to try and 
persuade her. 

“ I want it to be always here, always now,” 
she cried. “ Always you. Always father 
and mother. 0 Auntie, Auntie, why will 
you be older than I am ? ” 

“ One day you will be just as old yourself, 
my child.” 

“ Oh dear ! ” said Kitty. “ That makes it 
better — I never thought of that.” 

We all three laughed, but Kitty had her 
way and the Funeral Marches were banished. 

“ How very old she does think people of our 
age,” Lucilla observed when she was gone. 

“ She has made me remember my years. 


86 


THE LADY ON THE 


and the number of my days what it is,” I 
said. “ I shall go down to my own room 
and meditate. Miranda was only fifteen 
when Prospero declared that every third 
thought should be his grave. I have heard 
a middle-aged man say that was the right 
proportion, I daresay Prospero was younger 
than I am.” 

Lucilla paid not the slightest attention to 
this neat Shakespearean essay.” 

“ I cannot bear the child to be frightened,” 
she said. “ She would not be so much afraid 
for us if she were not afraid herself. I never 
had that fear. I do not understand it. She 
will be less afraid when she knows what it 
is — when she has lost some one.” 

“ Will she ? ” I said. “ Do you not think 
it is a matter of temperament ? ” 

“ Perhaps.” 

Lucilla spoke with courtesy rather than 
with confidence. I think she distrusted the 
modern word temperament very much as she 
distrusted the words heredity and environ- 
ment. They seemed to her faithless. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


87 


“ I wish,” she continued, after a minute’s 
pause, “ that some one could teach her how 
to think more accurately. She lets her 
feelings run away with her.” 

Again I smiled. For I knew that there 
was more power of accurate thinking in Kitty 
than in Lucilla, and I was not so sure that 
if she did begin to think, Lucilla would like 
it. Kitty had the fatal power of seeing 
things as they are. 

In minor matters, however, she was inac- 
curate enough, and I am sorry to say she 
had not the slightest regard for accuracy. 
She had been taught — or she had chosen of 
her own accord — to call Lucilla, who was no 
relation in the world to her, “ Auntie.” She 
had taken the Unknown, Painter Unknown, 
over the mantelpiece, for Eaphael by Himself, 
and even after she found out her mistake, 
she persisted in calling me “ Mr. Eaph,” 
because of the fancied likeness that she 
detected as quickly as Lucilla, I think 
names meant much to her, for she named 
everything that she came across. 


88 


THE LADY ON THE 


Katerfelto accepted her as a matter of 
course. The parrot liked her better than 
Lucilla, and would sit on her shoulder and 
lay his gray bill against her cheek. She 
taught him to say, “ How are you ? ” and was 
inordinately vain of the achievement. She 
lost her heart at once to Tricksy Wee, and 
to my surprise I found myself building card- 
houses and blowing soap-bubbles to amuse 
that young person, who had never seemed 
to want amusing before. She was also much 
naughtier ; Kitty excited her. 

Kitty was, of course, devoted to Lucilla; 
I never met the girl who was not; and as 
I had formerly profited by Frida’s devotion, 
so now I profited much more by hers. Her 
pretty feeling for her guardian extended 
itself to her guardian’s friend ; and, with a 
feeling of pleasant wonder, I began to under- 
stand what Lucilla had foreseen, I suppose, 
from the first — that my friendship with her 
would grow yet more pleasurable from our 
common interest in the life so much younger 
than our own. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


89 


We were always holding little committees 
of two on Kitty, her sayings and her doings. 
Lucilla would half pretend to find some fault. 
I would defend the absent, and she was not 
displeased. After our first conversation about 
her I never attempted independent criti- 
cism, nor — to be quite fair — did it occur 
to me. 

“I think the child ought to see some 
pictures,” Lucilla said one day. “ You know 
all about pictures. I only know the few that 
I love ; but she ought, of course, to be shown 
the difierent Schools. Would it be troubling 
you too much to ask you to take her to the 
National Gallery ? ” 

I leapt at the offer ; not thinking honestly 
that Kitty would ever care much about 
pictures, not minding much whether she did 
or did not. 

She was delighted to come. Her merry 
nature found mirth in every journey to and 
fro. Lightly she ran up and down the steps 
of ’bus after ’bus ; airily she settled beside 
Lucilla on the top and looked upon the 


90 


THE LADY ON THE 


streets as on a garden, every inch of which 
had been laid out to charm her. 

I could not climb the steps, but in spirit 
I, too, sat on top. I understood that she 
could not be caged inside ; and I heard 
what she said, for Lucilla told me. 

It pleased her when she heard her brother 
man address her brother man as “Now then, 
Four-Wheel Cab ! ” 

It pleased her to see a carriage full of 
plump, rosy, fair-haired children — to know 
that one of them would some day be King 
of England. 

“Just like little fat Cupids,” said she. 
“ What a lovely place London is ! Look at 
the little darling Cupid on that house ! 
There is another ! And there’s another ! ’ ’ 

I had never seen these Cupids on the 
houses in Piccadilly before ; it amazed me 
to find how many there were. Some- 
times, as I go past them now, I look for 
them and think of Kitty. They did not 
interest Lucilla, but she was kind to them 
for Kitty’s sake. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


91 


When we reached Trafalgar Square, how- 
ever, such a diversity of tastes became 
apparent that I wondered whether we should, 
on any single Saturday morning, find any 
single picture at which we could all three 
gaze with satisfaction. The initial difficulties 
were tremendous. 

To begin with, no one could persuade 
Kitty to look at things in order. You 
might as well have hoped to persuade a 
squirrel. Through an open door she would 
catch a glimpse of a baby — of the head of 
a Cherub — of a Lady at a Harpischord — 
and she was ofi. Michael Angelo himself 
could not detain her. It mattered nothing 
to her who had painted the picture if she 
did not like it ; and very little if she did. 
She would settle on the picture itself as 
the squirrel stops and settles on the bough, 
crack the nut for a minute as if she had 
nothing else to do, and race away again. 

Now Lucilla liked to take one room at a 
time, and to consult the Handbook. She 
wanted to be told, not only who every 


92 


THE LADY ON THE 


painter was, but whether he had a wife 
and children, whether he lived in Venice, 
Florence, or Kome, whether he died a natural 
death or “disappeared.” Two questions were, 
although she did not ask them in word, for 
ever present with her as she looked; the 
first, the eternal child’s question, “ Was he 
good ? ” the second, the eternal student’s 
question, “ What did he mean ? ” Having 
determined in her own mind that the early 
Italians were good (we know so little about 
them) and that they meant something (which 
is true occasionally), she went, by preference, 
to the Early Italians. She would stand for 
half an hour patiently making out the 
emblems of every bright particular star in 
Fra Angelico’s Paradise, or in Botticelli’s, 
quoting in a hushed voice remembered lines 
from Dante. 

To her pictures were signs and symbols ; 
if they failed to connect themselves with 
something invisible, she did not care about 
them. 

To Kitty pictures were memories of some- 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


93 


thing that she had seen for herself, and 
recognised with joy — suggestions of some- 
thing it would be good to see some day. 

To me pictures were pictures. 

Both my companions displayed equal in- 
difference to colour and drawing, and the 
only point on which they could agree con- 
cerned my supposed pedantry in such matters 
as these. 

“ That arm is all wrong,” I would say to 
Kitty, before an enchanting Sir Joshua. 

“As if it matters about an arm ! ” she 
would reply indignantly. “ It’s just the 
most darling little child I ever saw.” 

“ That leg is preposterous ! ” I would say 
to Lucilla, before a Blake. 

“As if it mattered about legs ! ” she would 
reply indignantly. “ He was thinking of 
souls.” 

Yet Lucilla, in whom the quality of a 
teacher ran strong, although she never, to 
my knowledge, filled any educational post, 
was teachable, as teachers always are. With 
infinite pains I taught her to respect Velas- 


94 


THE LADY ON THE 


quez’ “ Admiral.” I induced her to lay 
out some of her spare time on “ Bacchus 
and Ariadne.” 

She thought the Admiral voluptuous and 
cruel, and to this day I remain uncertain 
whether she really showed anything more 
than an amiable desire to meet me half 
way on that subject ; but she did at last 
become an enthusiastic admirer of Titian — 
though even then I am afraid she found 
it easier in that “Bacchus and Ariadne ” are 
an allegory, and Euskin has an elaborate 
theory of the significance of it. 

Kitty I never tried to teach : she taught 
me often by wise, instinctive flashes, as a 
child teaches. 

“ Let us go down these steps ! Kitty ought 
to see the statue of Gordon,” Lucilla said, 
after our first visit. 

So we went down among the lions and 
the fountains. 

If she had not spoken thus, I should 
have made an excuse and stayed behind, 
for I could not leave Trafalgar Square with- 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


95 


out going to stand bare-headed before the 
greatest Englishman of our time. As we 
gazed at the statue no one spoke ; and even 
Kitty stood still. 

I think Lucilla, who had a purpose in 
everything she did, may have cherished the 
hope that the early Italians would open 
Kitty’s eyes to the light invisible. If so, 
it was not fulfilled. We find what we 
bring with us, and Kitty being still a child, 
saw everywhere not Heaven but Fairyland. 

It was much the same if we went on 
Sunday, as we sometimes did, to hear a 
famous preacher at the Abbey or at St. 
Paul’s. 

What pictures failed to accomplish, preachers 
might suggest perhaps, Lucilla thought. I 
knew instinctively the trend of her reflec- 
tions; and I was further complimented by 
being asked to help in the second experiment. 
I was not a regular attendant at church 
myself. The ancient spell under which I 
had lived in my youth was broken, and I 
had lost the habit, but I fell into it again 


96 


THE LADY ON THE 


gladly now there was some one who wished 
me to go. 

“ The child ought to hear the great 
preachers,” Lucilla said. “Would it be 
troubling you very much to find out who they 
are ? I myself never stay for the sermon, 
if I can help it. When I was her age 
though, I felt differently. She ought to 
have the chance. Perhaps you would be so 
very kind as to take her some afternoon?” 

Lucilla’s custom was to go to church early 
in the morning — I used to watch her leaving 
the house with her little prayer-book — and 
sometimes of an evening. She did not like 
a crowd, she hated emotion and excitement. 
An empty, quiet, unpopular church was the 
church of her choice, and wherever she went 
she made interest with the sexton to get a 
window open. It rather annoyed her to be 
considered “ orthodox,” and she had little 
sympathy with those whom she called 
“ dogmatic.” I vexed her once by the 
assertion that orthodox only meant straight 
thinking and dogma an opinion. They meant. 


DEA.WINGEOOM FLOOE 


97 


according to her, something much worse and 
quite different. Of course, if I did not under- 
stand, she said, she could not explain ; people 
who knew Oreek never did understand words. 
I am convinced that in her heart she thought 
dogma had something to with dogs, whom 
she disliked, not personally, but because cats 
disliked them, and cats were weaker than 
dogs. 

What her heterodoxy consisted in I do 
not know, unless it lay in the fact that she 
believed that all men were made to be made 
good — and therefore happy — in the end. She 
did not tell me this in so many words; but 
I gathered it, partly from that unquenchable 
hopefulness which was, in her, the result not 
so much of nature as of thought — partly 
from the extreme indignation with which 
she visited the landlady when she found 
that Tricksy Wee had been terrified by 
descriptions of hell. 

“If I could ever believe in it at all, I 
could believe that it was made for those 
who frighten little children ! ” she said, her 
8 


98 


THE LADY ON THE 


eyes gleaming so fiercely that I did not 
know them. 

She was tolerant of different opinions in 
religion, so long as they were not cruel, 
though very clear as to her own. 

Fanaticism alarmed her. I have seen her 
lips grow white when she encountered a 
detachment of the Salvation Army. 

We were waiting on a doorstep to let 
them pass. I had turned to her with some 
commonplace remark, but it froze on my 
lips. I suppose I asked a question. 

“It is,” she said, “ that if that woman 
with the timbrel and the beautiful eyes knew 
the right word, and said it, I should be 
marching by her side to-morrow.” 

I could not have believed these expressions 
if I had not heard them. They seemed to 
me wild — inconsistent — absurd. Yet, as I 
pondered over them in solitude, I began to 
feel that in religion also Lucilla might 
have to bridle and restrain enthusiasm that 
would otherwise have run to madness — I 
came to understand why it was that she 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


99 


disliked excessive ritual, yet could not bear 
the absence of all ritual ; that — dearly as she 
loved music — she preferred to accomplish the 
highest act of worship in silence. 

There was one title the use of which never 
failed to provoke her quiet scorn. 

“ If people say Our Lord we all know what 
they mean,” she said. “ If they say Jesus 
Christ we know what they mean. But The 
Founder of Christianity ! It was left for 
the pedants of the twentieth century to find 
out that; they alone know what they mean 
by it.” 

Kitty was quite as well pleased to go to 
church as she had been to visit Trafalgar 
Square. 

She had the sweet, natural devoutness of 
all good girls, oddly combined with a dash 
of scepticism, inherited, perhaps, from her 
French father. She would ask difficult ques- 
tions now and then as to the meaning of 
words, and Lucilla, for all her ignorance of 
Gireek, did not know how to answer. 


100 


THE LADY ON THE 


“ Auntie,” she said one day, “ I feel so 
happy on Sundays, when I’ve got on my 
new hat. Do you think it is quite true to 
say so very often that the burden of my 
sins is ‘ intolerable ’ ? ” 

“I hope that you will never live to think 
it more true than you do now, my child,” 
Lucilla said. She spoke as if she were pained, 
as indeed she always was if any remark were 
made as to the words of the Liturgy. Yet 
Lucilla had that morning put on her little 
close-fitting bonnet — the bonnet that became 
her so well — to go and say that the burden 
of her sins was “ intolerable.” 

Nor is there any doubt in my mind that 
she believed it was. Only when we are very 
young and logical do certain words appear to 
us to contradict certain facts in this way. 

It was a foregone conclusion with me 
that the child would care most for St. 
Paul’s ; but the fact that she did so bafiled 
and disappointed Lucilla, who liked to go 
there that she might hear any one who 
happened to be with her say how much 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


101 


more beautiful was the Abbey. To her the 
shadow, the mystery, the manifold associa- 
tions of the dim shrine of St. Peter out- 
weighed the beauty of the shafts of light 
struck through the dome, of the vast con- 
course of human beings kneeling and standing 
together as one man. 

Wherever she might be, whether in the 
Abbey or at St. Paul’s, Kitty sang and 
prayed with the best of them ; but I observed 
that she took an unobtrusive little red pocket- 
book with her, and that she employed the 
interval of the sermon in sketching. She 
seemed to find the study of minor canons 
more interesting than theology in a less 
concrete form — or perhaps it was the Cupid 
over the organ that she drew. While she 
sketched, Lucilla sat listening for morals and 
for reasons. If morals were drawn, if reasons 
were found for her, she remained content; 
she had a fine disdain of mere rhetoric. Is he 
good? What does he mean? Again I recog- 
nized in her the everlasting child, the eternal 
student. 


102 


THE LADY ON THE 


With music it was different. There the 
artist came in, and she boldly threw signifi- 
cance to the winds. Once or twice, when I 
ventured out of the condition of blind enjoy- 
ment to inquire what this, that, or the other 
meant, she looked at me as if I were making 
a fool of myself. She asked me once to go, 
when she and Kitty attended a concert, but I 
refused. I had heard them talking together. 
They said things not to be understood by 
any one except a member of the Eoyal 
College of Music. I preferred the concerts 
given in Back Street, where there were two 
soloists and an audience of one. 

Sometimes they essayed a duet — to their 
own great satisfaction, but not to mine ; for 
on these occasions the piano spoke with two 
voices, and I did not know what it said. In 
fact, they were doing what good manners 
would have prevented their doing in any 
other way — they were both talking at once; 
but they never found it out. 

They were not even so good to look at 
as usual, for while the treble moved to and 


DKAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


103 


fro, the bass sat fixed like a rock. Two 
sisters — twins, if possible — are the only 
people who ought to play duets on the 
piano. Difference of temperament is too 
strongly marked in all others. 

Often Lucilla, who loved an opera, would 
play one through, recalling the story as she 
went along. 

“We ought to take Kitty to see it,” she 
said one evening, when we were all three 
very happy over “ Borneo and Juliet.” 

“ No, no,” said Kitty eagerly, glancing up 
from her seat on the fender-stool. “ Don’t 
let us go. It’s much more nice as you play 
it. Auntie. It’s much more nice with only 
you and Mr. Eaph here. I’ve been once, and 
I don’t like it. I don’t like the ugly, painted 
ladies. And I hate to see people making love 
to each other. I’d like to run away when I 
see that.” 

“ Kitty ought to go oftener to balls and 
parties. She ought to have more companions 
of her own age,” Lucilla said thoughtfully 
when she was gone. “ I cannot tell what to 


104 


THE LADY ON THE 


do about it. If I invite Frida they are very 
polite to each other, but one is always glad 
whenever the other leaves. They both want 
to talk to me, not to anyone else ; and Kitty 
does not get on with Mrs. Hopgood, and won’t 
accept Frida’s invitations. She likes the 
masters at college well enough, but she does 
not seem to care for the boys and girls that 
she meets there ; she will not let me ask 
them to come. I don’t want her to lose 
touch with her own generation. It’s not right.” 

“ Were not you rather surprised just now ? ” 
I said. “ I thought that all young ladies 
liked operas and plays, and people falling in 
love.” 

She sighed. 

“ They are so different nowadays. We were 
much more sentimental. Kitty often makes 
me feel ashamed of myself backwards.” 

“ She is wonderfully attractive,” I said, 
with a curious feeling that the room had 
grown darker the minute she left it. 

“Yes,” Lucilla said. “We shall not keep 
her much longer.” 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


105 


The words fell like stones on me. 

“ Surely,” I said, startled, “ she is very 
young — too young to think of anything of 
that kind. You will not lose her yet.” 

Lucilla sighed again. 

“ I do not know. She is nineteen. Older 
than — some girls.” 

Lucilla finished that sentence wrongly. 
Borne girls was not what she meant to say 
when she began. 

What had she meant to say ? 

In a moment, without a moment’s warning, 
I had come close to the edge of something 
that I should have liked to know. But I 
was stopped upon the edge ; I went no 
further. 


106 


THE LADY ON THE 


VII 

"TV /TY cousin had asked many little services 
of me, seldom in vain. The time was 
come when I meant to ask something of my 
cousin. The conviction that she would be 
very much astonished, and not altogether 
gratified, made me laugh in my sleeve. 
Hitherto, whenever we enjoyed a friendly 
contest, I had always been defeated, but now 
I meant to win. 

Time, that brings round many greater 
things, brought round the occasion that I 
desired. Frida was coming out, and a ball 
had to be given in Pont Street in honour of 
the event. 

“ I’m not going to ask you ! ” said my 
cousin. “ You can’t dance.” 

A fact, undoubtedly. Why should any one 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 107 

dislike to have that taken for granted which is 
self-evident ? 

I thought of the power of the human 
eye. 

“ No,” I said, fixing it upon my cousin 
with the firmness of a man determined to 
conquer or to perish. “ You are not going 
to ask me, because I cannot dance, but you 
are going to ask some one instead of me, 
who can.” 

“ Oh, some man friend of yours ? De- 
lighted ! ” 

“No, not a man friend, but a girl.” 

“ A girl ! ” repeated my cousin, with dis- 
approval as pronounced as if I had said “A 
porpoise ! ” “ You, of all people ! And why, 

pray, should I ask a girl ? ” 

“ Because she will enjoy it more than any 
one else you could ask.” 

“ It is not at all a question of her enjoying 
it,” said my cousin severely. “It is a ques- 
tion of my finding partners. If I invite her, 
will you promise to come yourself ? You 
can’t dance, of course, but at any rate you 


108 


THE LADY ON THE 


can take her in to supper ; and you look like 
a man.” 

I weighed the matter with a sigh, and said 
“Yes.” 

“ Where does she live? ” asked my practical 
cousin. “ She has a mother, or an aunt, or 
something, I suppose ? ” 

“ Miss Z. is, at the present moment, her 
mother and her aunt. 

“ Oh, I see ! ” said my cousin. “ She asked 
you to ask me, of course ? ” 

“ On the contrary, she knows nothing 
whatever about it.” 

“ Oh, well, Frida insisted on her being 
asked, anyhow — the invitation’s written — so 
it only makes one more. Here’s a card. 
You’d better take it yourself, and then Miss 
Z. can give it to the girl.” 

Fancy Dress !” 1 said in some alarm as I 
glanced at it. I had wished to please Kitty ; 
yes ; but had I wished to please her to the 
extent of appearing in fancy dress? 

“ I quite agree with you,” said my cousin. 
“ It’s an awful nuisance. But somebody has 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


109 


put it into Frida’s head that she is like a 
Botticelli, and she wants to wear a dress that 
nobody could wear at any ball, except a fancy 
ball, and a cock’s feather sticking straight up 
in the middle of her hair ; so what was I to 
do ? It’s all very well for you, you’re a man ; 
you can borrow a uniform, or a pink coat. 
You needn’t complain.” 

“ I shall bring a bundle of parchments tied 
up with red tape, and appear as what I am — a 
solicitor,” I observed. “ It is rare for any one 
to appear in his own character; the most 
fanciful thing he can do, in fact.” 

After tea that evening, as she sat down to 
the piano, I asked Kitty if she were fond of 
dancing. In a minute half the fairies of the 
“ Midsummer Night’s Dream ” were flitting 
over the keyboard. Presently she began to 
speak in a far-away voice, not like her own, 
playing louder between the words, and lightly 
when she wanted me to hear. 

“ &o the Fairy Queen said there should he a 
dance in the forest. There were no birds, of 


110 


THE LADY ON THE 


course, because it was dark. And they did not 
ash the Nightingale, for if he had come they 
would have listened instead of dancing^ 

Here the nightingale got into the piano 
and had it all his own way — but not for 
long. With Kitty, nothing ever was for 
long. 

But the bluebells rang, and the daffodils 
blew their trumpets. The moon was not 
shining, you know — they had forgotten to ask 
her — but all the stars were out ; so they 
danced, they danced, and they danced till 
the jealous angry moon put her yellow face 
through, and shot an arrow at the Fairy 
Queen, so that she dropped down dead. Then 
they were all very sorry, and they had a 
Fairy Funeral, and this is the Funeral 
March. Auntie says you like Funeral 
Marches, Mr. Eaph. Do you hear the rose- 
leaves blowing about over the grave ? ” 

I did indeed. The room was filled with 
the tramp of tiny feet, and tiny tears were 
shed, and tiny wings folded. And with some 
other consciousness I was aware that Lucilla 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


111 


feared lest Kitty were going where she 
should not, and wished to stop her, and 
knew not how. 

“ But the wind drove the clouds across the 
yellow jealous moon, and drove the rose-leaves 
off the Fairy Queen, and she wohe up again, 
and they all danced for joy till the Cock cried 
‘ Cochadoodledoo' ” 

With which performance of the cock Kitty 
concluded. 

“ There, Mr. Eaph,” she said demurely. 
“Never ask me again if I am fond of 
dancing ! I should like to dance every 
night of my life until I dropped.” 

She rose from the piano, and took her usual 
seat on the fender-stool, with the sudden 
gravity of a kitten after it is tired of playing 
with a ball of worsted. 

“ Your fairies kept bad time, Kitty, and 
they danced in the oddest place I ever heard 
of,” said Lucilla. “Daffodils and bluebells 
and roses, all out together ! ” 

“ I can’t help it. Auntie. There are no 
clocks in Fairyland, and everything nice 


112 


THE LADY ON THE 


happens there all at once. Do you — I mean, 
did you — like dancing, Auntie dear ? ” 

“ Yes,” Lucilla said. “ I liked it very much, 
but not in that way. This was how I liked it. 
Only you must dance now, or I cannot play.” 

She moved to the piano. 

Kitty sprang to her feet, caught up a 
Japanese fan that was lying on the table, 
lifted her white cotton skirt daintily with 
the other hand, and faced her own reflection 
in the mirror. 

“ Play, Auntie, play ! ” she cried im- 
patiently. “ Play the lovely old Gluck 
Minuet that you played the other night! 
I know some of the steps. Father taught me.” 

Lucilla sat down, obedient, to do as she 
was bid. For a second ere she began, she 
glanced at the child over her shoulder. The 
evening sun streamed full upon her, lighting 
up the words on the old mirror opposite, Hier 
c’est demain. 

But I have only one pair of eyes ; when 
Lucilla goes to the piano, they belong to 
her ; so I know not what Kitty did. The 


DBAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


113 


mirror knew, I suppose, for she danced to 
her own reflection. As the Minuet ended, 
she dismissed it, with a low curtsey and a 
wave of the Japanese fan. 

“ If you went to a Fancy Dress Ball,” I 
said, “ what would you wear ? 

“ ‘ Little Turk or Japanee, 

O, don’t you wish that you were me ? ’ 

Or would you be a fairy? Or would you 
be a lady with powdered hair ? ” 

“What a hard question! It would take 
me at least a week to answer it properly. 
No, I would be the china shepherdess on 
Auntie’s cupboard, in a white dress, with 
lilac flowers and a lilac sash and a crook. 
Auntie should be a great tall beautiful 
Vandyck, all in black velvet, with a ruff round 
her neck. As for you, Mr. Raph, you should 
be that queer man over the mantelpiece of 
course — in the slouchy hat, — the man I used 
to think was Raphael. Oh why — why are 
we not all going to a Fancy Ball together? 
What fun it would be ! I have never gone 
to a Fancy Ball in my life.” 

9 


114 


THE LADY ON THE 


“ Well, you are going to one now, my 
dear ! ” I said, with an odd sense of self 
reproach for not having seen to this most 
important matter before. “So is your Aunt. 
So am I. But this will be the first Ball 
that I have ever attended. Will you take 
me as a debutant ? I am going in character, 
to the tune of a bundle of parchments tied 
up with red tape.” 

I felt it necessary to be firm and clear 
about this, as I drew the card from my 
pocket. 

Kitty snatched it from me, waltzed round 
the room with it, tossed it to Lucilla, who 
was still sitting with her hands on the keys, 
laughing softly. 

“ Auntie ! ” she said, “ I always knew that 
Mr. Eaph was the kindest person in all the 
great wide world.” 

What is there in the midst of our mirth 
that checks us suddenly, in the sweet 
gratitude of the young ? Is it shame that 
when so little is needed to make them happy, 
we have taken so little trouble to give it 


DEAWINGROOM FLOOR 115 

them ? Is it the quick instinct that they 
will soon need more ? 

“ How very kind of Mrs. Hopgood ! ” 
Lucilla said. “ Of course I should never 
have thought of asking her. Frida begged 
me to go, the other day. She said I told her 
once that she was like a Botticelli. So she 

is, dear child — the thin, willowy figure, the 
pale delicate, sensitive face ! She wanted me 
to see her dancing like Simonetta in Simon- 
etta’s dress. I told her that I never went 
to dances since I had given up the pleasant 
habit of being young. But, now I should 
like to go ; I should like to take Kitty.” 

“ Do you know. Auntie, that this is Mr. 
Eaph’s first dance — the first he’s ever gone 
to in his life ? We must start very early, 
so that he may not miss one moment of 

it. I’m going to give him a flower for his 
button-hole. What shall it be?” 

“A bachelor’s button,” I said. “ Will the 
Gentle Shepherdess and the Duchess by 
Vandyck do him the honour of dining with 
him at his club, before they go ? ” 


116 


THE LADY ON THE 


“What fun! I did not know you had a 
club, Mr. Eaph. When do you go to it ? ” 

“ My club is the South Kensington Mu- 
seum,” I said. “ I pay sixpence a week 
whenever I want to belong, and I meet the 
Gods of Greece there — and all the best 
company.” 

If Kitty was not much like the china 
shepherdess on the cupboard, or any other 
shepherdess in or out of Arcadia, she was 
more like herself than I had seen her yet, on 
the night of the ball. I cannot in the least 
describe it. There are these radiant mo- 
ments for boys and maidens when first the 
sense of power blossoms out, and on a sudden 
they become aware of homage in the eyes 
of those who behold them. Proud and 
delighted, Lucilla looked at me with triumph 
as who should say, “ There ! — But you 
doubted ! I knew long ago.” 

Kitty had sprung on to the sofa. Her 
little silver shoes sparkled and shone under 
her white and silver petticoats. She held 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


117 


her silver crook, adorned with shining 
dewdrops, like a sceptre. A wreath of soft 
green leaves lay on her hair. Before her 
stood ranged her humble Court — Lucilla, 
stately in her sweeping robes of black — the 
charmed, obsequious landlord — the landlady, 
fussy and critical, but softened for once to 
true benevolence — Mahry in the seventh 
Heaven of frightened admiration — the middle- 
aged Solicitor, armed with parchments, who 
bent towards her, lifted her light hand to 
his lips, and placed in it a branch of lilac. 
She threw it over her shoulder like a sheaf. 

“ It’s just too beautiful ! ” she cried. “ Oh, 
Mr. Eaph ! ” 

This also was like Kitty. She very rarely 
said anything so common as “ ThanTi-you." 
She expressed pleasure — which is a prettier 
thing than gratitude — by a cry, a gesture, 
a glance. 

Thus, with all the good will in the world, 
amid the nods and becks, and wreathed 
smiles of the inhabitants — the Old Lady 
peered at us under her blind, the children 


118 


THE LADY ON THE 


stood staring in a barefaced group on their 
doorsteps, the Artist happened to be entering 
his door and paused, knocker in hand, and 
I caught the Florist’s wife peeping behind 
her palm — we started for the club dinner. 

As regarded the club dinner, there had 
been a slight difficulty a few days earlier. 

“ I think — if you do not mind,” Lucilla 
observed to me in private, “ we will dine at 
the Museum first, and come home to get 
ready. Then we shall start fresh. If we 
were to go in our fine clothes, Kitty would 
only rumple her gown. She would be far 
too much excited to eat anything, and she 
would want to be off every minute. It will 
be much better to dine in peace and comfort. 
We shall have a long night before us. I 
know the child. You ' are not responsible. 
You may get home before dawn, but I am 
sure to see the sunrise. You remember 
how the Fairy Queen danced till the cock 
said ‘ Cockadoodledoo ! ’ ” 

In secret I was disappointed. I had looked 
forward to a white vision of the child among 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


119 


the snowy fauns, the still Bacchantes of 
the Hall of Statues. Yet more I wished to 
see Lucilla, clothed like the Night, moving 
amongst them. I assented at once, however. 
Single people who rule their own lives are 
glad to be ruled for a minute or two, if they 
get the chance. But Kitty had been left 
out of the reckoning, and she disapproved 
with the utmost vehemence when her 
chaperone suggested to her that we should 
come home to dress. 

“Auntie!” she said, “ I am surprised at 
you. It was not you and me, it was a Duchess 
by Vandyck, and a china Shepherdess that 
Mr. Eaph invited to dine with him. I 
couldn’t think of going as my own self. 
It wouldn’t be proper at all. I’ve not been 
asked. Nor have you.” 

So it was a Duchess and a china Shep- 
herdess who sat down with a Solicitor, 
parchment in hand, to eat beefsteak in the 
blue-tiled Grill Boom, after all. 

“ What lovely cooks ! ” Kitty said, with 
a sigh of content. “ I never saw such nice 


120 


THE LADY ON THE 


cooks anywhere. They look like statue cooks 
in their white aprons.” 

She had regained her spirits after a brief 
eclipse in the Hall of Statues. In that 
faint, shadow-veiled light, in that world of 
frozen dancing girls and maidens gone a- 
hunting, a momentary silence fell upon her. 
She seemed to change like a chameleon, 
to take the same dumb huelessness. Lucilla 
walked along the solemn avenue as if she had 
a right to be there, as if she could at any 
moment, if she would, become a sister statue. 

The cooks, turning and basting their beef- 
steaks at the fire, put fresh life into Kitty 
on an instant. She laughed and chattered 
until I felt sorry for a remote young art- 
student, dining in solitary state at the next 
table, clearly envious. I knew he would have 
liked to flirt with her. 

Others came in — an odd, shady party, 
with bad clothes and good faces, and that 
strange touch of over-coquettishness in the 
girls, over-familiarity in the men, which 
marks those whom study in common is lifting. 


DEAWINGKOOM FLOOB 


121 


but has not lifted quite high enough. To 
Kitty they seemed like people in a play, I 
am afraid she liked them all the more because 
they threw bits of bread at each other across 
the dishes. One was quieter, more refined 
than the rest — a Sir Joshua Eeynolds of 
the future perhaps. He stared very hard 
at Kitty when he thought no one was looking; 
and once I caught him sketching her on the 
table-cloth. 

To my amusement it was Lucilla, not 
Kitty, who betrayed excitement, nervousness, 
a certain fear of being late, a certain dread 
of being early — it was Lucilla who pretended 
to eat, and then asked me the time. Kitty 
did not hurry herself in the least. 

Beefsteak, according to her, had never 
tasted so delicious; to see it grilled yourself 
before you ate it gave a kind of personal 
charm to the most national food in the world. 

“ Your health, Mr. Kaph ! ” she cried, 
lifting her glass. 

I returned thanks in a speech, to the great 
amusement of the art-students. 


122 


THE LADY ON THE 


Vain man that I am, I was conscious of 
the many admiring glances shot in the 
direction of the Duchess and the china 
Shepherdess, for all that they sat cruelly 
mufiSed up in soft white clouds, as careless of 
mankind as if they had been true Olympians. 
I liked to think the students were wondering 
who the Solicitor was, and what he had to 
do with them. 

Proserpina graced my speech, and Demeter. 
In the unspoken thoughts of the deep heart, 
I rather held that Lucilla resembled the 
Goddess of the Hearth, beautiful Hestia, 
who stayed at home and kept the fire bright 
while all the other Goddesses went out. I 
believe she would sooner have stayed at home 
that evening. 

“Hush ! Hush ! You will turn the child’s 
head. It must be nearly time for us to go,” 
said Lucilla. 

Not much of Kitty’s company did she 
and I enjoy after that; but, for my part, I 
did not want it. 

As my two ladies fluttered and swept into 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


123 


the drawingroom in front of me, I experienced 
something that I had never felt before, I 
saw that my cousin was impressed, that 
Kitty was not what she expected, that other 
people were impressed likewise. 

Frida, the cook’s feather in her hair, came 
up shyly, almost devoutly, to kiss and 
welcome her friendly Duchess ; and they 
were quickly surrounded. 

One fantastic, eager young gentleman 
after another, soldier, sailor, tinker, tailor, 
appeared with great alacrity, murmured a 
word in Frida’s ear, made Kitty a bow, 
seized the minute pencil hanging by a thread 
of blue to her card, inscribed his name. 

“ There seems to be no great difficulty 
about finding partners,” I observed. 

“ I never thought there would be ! ” said 
Lucilla, with a smile in which lay something 
of the satisfaction of prophecy fulfilled. 

As the evening wore on I forgot that, 
for the first few minutes, I had felt like 
a bat in sunshine. I passed through various 
stages of fresh experience. 


124 


THE LADY ON THE 


There came first the unusual gratification 
of delicate, bright lights, of softly shaded 
roses, of rhythmical music, of flowers and 
feathers and flashing jewels, of graceful, 
curving movement. I watched, with sym- 
pathy quite new to me, each young figure 
as it entered — the hope, the wondering, the 
fear, the welcome, the aversion, the merri- 
ment, the dreamy surrender, on every face in 
turn — their formal stiff approaching of each 
other, their conventional greetings, the quick 
understanding or misunderstanding, followed 
by laughter or by embarrassed silence, the 
partners firmly held or fearfully, the rushing 
or gliding or measured steps together, the 
relief or the reluctance of the bow and the 
bended head, as the maid returned to the 
matron, and the young man sought another. 

Sometimes I almost felt as if I could have 
danced myself. I learnt once, at my cousin’s 
instigation, long ago, in the hour of my 
wealth, when she looked upon me as the 
eligible partner-for-life of a certain relative 
of hers. Not all her descriptions of this 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


125 


young lady’s charm, however, had persuaded 
me to cross the threshold of a ballroom in 
those days. I was far too shy. By what 
caprice of fancy was it that now I almost 
felt as if I could have danced myself ? The 
thought brought back to me with a pang 
the recollection that I was middle-aged 
and lame, that I was here on suSerance 
only — the wraith of a man who, for the 
dancing world, had never lived — not the 
father, not the uncle even of any boy or 
girl in the room. That moment I felt 
alone, and bitterly alone, I wished that I 
were back in my dingy quarters in Back 
street. I kept a friend there always. Here 
he had left me. 

“It makes one feel rather like a ghost, 
does it not ? ” Lucilla said. And from 
that moment I was no longer one by 
myself. 

“ Were you really fond of dancing ? ” I 
asked. 

“Yes — and no. I was very fond of it 
in my girlish days, when I learnt from an old 


126 


THE LADY ON THE 


French dancing master with a fiddle, who used 
to say, ‘ Now, my dears, there are rats in that 
wall, and they will bite you if you lean 
against it ! ’ He taught us pretty, sliding, 
curtseying steps and ways — not to look 
glum, not to frown at each other — not to 
go squarely through a crowd, but like a 
smiling human wedge — not to “ waddle or 
toddle or walk in two parishes at once,” 
(that was the way most Englishwomen 
walked, he said) not to bang doors behind 
us, always to smile and to look gracious. 
When I came out into societj^ and found it 
so different — found that people gave them- 
selves no time to be gracious, and me no time 
to practise my careful steps — I was disgusted. 
I always liked the minuet, the long slow po- 
lonaise, much better than waltzing. I should 
have danced in the days of Louis XIV., I 
think. 

“I am very glad you did not.” 

“ I could always keep step with one person 
— and that was Kitty’s father. Because he 
was French, I suppose.” 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


127 


To have danced with her — to have made 
her like to dance with him — not to have 
married her ! What manner of man could 
Kitty’s father be ? French I supposed ! 
French like the dancing master, to whom, 
according to her own account, Lucilla owed 
her graciousness of manner. 

“ Kitty inherits that. She dances well, 
does she not ? She makes her partners 
respect her. That thickset Guardsman over 
there, who tumbled down a few minutes 
ago, did quite well so long as she had him 
in hand. Do you see the Nabob standing 
by the conservatory ? He is a famous 
cricketer. I sometimes think he is inclined 
to pay attention to Frida.” 

“ He seems to be paying considerable at- 
tention to Kitty,” I observed. “ He never 
takes his eyes ofi her.” 

“ Oh, that’s only because he doesn’t want 
people to see he is looking at Frida!” Lucilla 
said with comfortable assurance. 

At that moment Kitty was whirled past 
us, and I marked the curious distinction. 


128 


THE LADY ON THE 


the air of dainty fastidiousness, that made 
her other than the others. 

All this time Lucilla had been absorbed 
in her. She had only one interest in the 
room, and that was Kitty. Everything else 
was only Kitty’s background. She had 
spoken of the ghost feeling because she 
wanted to answer something that I had 
not said; not because she had any time 
to feel like a ghost. She had not wandered 
away to herself, to the rooms where she dwelt 
alone. It was because I had done this, 
that all this youth made me feel old, cold, 
solitary. It was because she had not done 
this, that she seemed to me younger, farther 
away from me again. 

Kows of what is, I suppose, the usual 
kind of mother, were seated along the wall. 
No doubt, because I have not much ac- 
quaintance with them, they seemed to me 
all very much alike, and very much like my 
cousin. 

I wondered how women felt when first 
they introduced a daughter into society ; 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


129 


whether they were most pleased or frightened, 
as the murmur of admiration went round ; 
whether they were relieved if she danced 
just as everyone else danced, and that was 
all; whether they recollected their own girl- 
hood and sighed or smiled. 

Lucilla appeared to have gone through 
most of these phases. 

At first, she confessed, she was lost in the 
study of Kitty’s dress. 

This amazed me ; surely there was no room 
for uneasiness on that score. 

“You are quite wrong,” Lucilla answered 
seriously. “ I had forgotten the wall-paper.” 

“ Dear me,” I said with a glance at it. 
“ If you had recollected, would you have 
dressed Kitty in pomegranates ? ” 

“I might, or I might not. Dress is much 
more a matter of relation than people think. 
That is the vexatious thing about a dance 
of this kind, you never can tell what other 
people are going to wear. I could have 
dressed Kitty even more becomingly if I 
had known beforehand who her partners 
10 


130 


THE LADY ON THE 


would be. It does not matter later on ; 
but a girl ought not to be too original, she 
should harmonize with her surroundings. 
However, one must leave something to 
chance, and to her own taste. — Charles I.’s 
costume goes best with her, as to colour, 
I think ? ” 

Charles I. was the young man with bad 
agate eyes whom I had met before at my 
cousin’s. I resented his assumption of the 
character, I could not feel certain that, 
if he were beheaded, anyone would be able 
to write of him : — 

“He nothing common did, nor mean, 

Upon that memorable scene.” 

He seemed to me to be doing common 
things every minute. 

It was altogether disheartening to see how 
few people understood the parts for which they 
might, with fitness, have been cast, in other 
ages, or in the golden East. The Nabob 
for instance, was a fair-haired, blue-eyed 
Saxon as any you would wish to see. A 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


131 


good blowsy, frowsy dumpling of a girl, 
who might have made a passable Audrey, 
appeared as Joan of Arc, at sight of which 
profanation it was all I could do not to 
use bad language. But Charles I. was 
very foolish indeed. He made despicable 
Jokes about his silly head, and I saw Kitty 
laughing at them too, which annoyed me. 

“ I cannot think why he was introduced 
to Kitty,” I said. “ I don’t like him.” 

“I do not think there is any harm in 
him,” said Luoilla. “ He was not born 
in the purple, of course. That sort of person 
always does want to be Charles I. Now 
Kitty has some right to call herself a china 
Shepherdess, has she not ? — Frida looks very 
picturesque.” 

I thought myself that Frida looked very 
odd; but I contented myself with remarking 
that she showed great devotion to Botticelli. 
Picturesque is a favourite word of Lucilla’s 
when she wishes, but does not venture to 
say that a girl of whom she is fond “looks 
pretty.” I might have said what I liked, 


132 


THE LADY ON THE 


however, for, having satisfied herself as to 
Kitty’s dress, she had begun to give even 
closer attention to Kitty’s partners, and they 
succeeded each other so rapidly that there 
was no keeping count. 

“ I like to watch her ways,” she said, with 
a smile. “ They amuse me. Such a child as 
she is — and yet she understands the game ! ” 

I wondered whether Lucilla had understood 
it so well in days gone by. I thought not. 

Presently her face clouded a little. 

“ She has danced too often with Charles I. 
— three times in succession. She will get 
herself talked about.” 

“ She danced three times with the Nabob 
about twenty-four hours ago, if that is any 
comfort to you,” I observed. 

“ You must be feeling very tired,” Lucilla 
said, with sudden penitence. “ Why will you 
not go home? I cannot bear to take her 
away just when she is enjo3dng herself so 
much,” she added, apologetically. 

A wave of the dance carried the child up 
to us. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


133 


She paused an instant to give her fan to 
Lucilla. 

“ Oh, Mr. Eaph ! don’t go ! Not yet,” she 
cried. 

Of course I stayed. I never meant to go. 
It amused me to watch Charles I. and the 
Nabob hating each other more and more. 
But Kitty was prudent as she was bold ; she 
danced a fourth time with neither. 

The sparrows were chirping when we drove 
away, and I saw the dawn as I had not seen 
it for many long years. It showed me that 
Lucilla looked more weary than I had ever 
seen her look before. 

“ It was a lovely evening. How I wish we 
were just going to start now ! ” Kitty said, 
unbuttoning her long glove regretfully. She 
looked as fresh as if she had spent the last six 
hours in rosy slumber, instead of in the arms 
of a dozen breathless young gentlemen, tear- 
ing round and round a hot, stuffy room with a 
slippery floor. 

“ Are you tired, Mr. Eaph ? It was good 
of you to stay all the time. I couldn’t have 


134 


THE LADY ON THE 


had the heart to keep Auntie, if you had not 
taken care of her. Oh, Auntie dear, you are 
tired ! ” 

“ Not at all ! ” said Lucilla, bravely opening 
eyes that had closed already. “ So you were 
happy, dear ? ” 

“ Happy is no word for it ! ” said Kitty. 
“I never was so happy in all my life.” 

Lucilla smiled at me. 

It is a satisfaction to a man getting on in 
years to think that he has had any hand in 
helping a girl to be happier than ever she was 
in all her life ; and I recollected the words 
with pleasure whenever I was not falling 
heavily asleep in my employer’s office, the 
whole of the next day. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


135 


VIII 

1” HAPPENED to be standing in the 
ball on the night after the dance when 
I heard a summoning, distressful cry from 
Kitty on the landing above. 

As fast as my lame leg would let me, I 
hobbled upstairs. 

“ Is she ill ? ” 

“ No, but Auntie is so unhappy. Oh, 
Mr. Eaph, do, do come in and comfort her ! 
Persica is lost, and we can’t find her, and 
Auntie is just as miserable as she can be.” 

Lucilla turned a mournful face towards 
me. 

“ Yes,” she said trying to smile, “ it 
is quite true. The poor thing is lost, and 
it is my fault. She was here after luncheon. 
She wanted to lie beside me on the sofa, 


136 


THE LADY ON THE 


and her hair is coming off, and I said, ‘ No, 
Persioa, I can’t do with you to-day.’ It 
was very unkind when the creature was 
losing her fur. The door stood open, she 
walked straight out of the room, and now 
we can’t find her anywhere.” 

Lucilla’s voice “ quivered ominously ” as 
they say in English novels. I, as they say 
in French novels, experienced “ a dumb 
rage.” Such a fuss about silly old Kater- 
felto ! I might have lost every hair on my 
head, I might have stayed out night after 
night, and no one would have oared about 
me. Did she expect me to go to the Cats’ 
Home, to look for him? 

“ I hope she is dead,” said Lucilla. “ I 
should be much happier if I knew she were 
dead.” 

“ I am quite sure she is dead ! ” I said, 
with determined cheerfulness. 

Whereupon Lucilla turned away, not to 
let me see her — well, I did not see them ! 
and Kitty behaved as if I had slain her 
precious pet with my own hands. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 137 

“ How can you, Mr. Eaph ? ” she said 
indignantly. “Don’t believe him for a 
moment, Auntie dear. She will come back, 
I know she will.” 

“ Perfectly certain to come back to-morrow 
morning,” I chimed in, seeing that Kitty 
had the key of the situation, and it was 
best to follow her lead. 

“Auntie has been tramping round all 
the streets in the neighbourhood, and ever 
so far along Brompton Eoad and towards 
Eaton Square,” Kitty exclaimed, with a strong 
touch of drama, “and now she wants to go 
out again, right down to Chelsea, to take 
some brandy to a poor old woman who’s 
not well ! I don’t know what to do with 
her. I would go myself, only she will not 
let me, because it’s dark. Oh, Mr. Eaph, 
do tell her not to go ! She’s much too tired, 
after last night.” 

Lucilla had on her little close bonnet, 
and her mantle was hanging over the arm 
of a chair. She was looking weary and 
worn, and most unfit for a night expedition. 


138 


THE LADY ON THE 


“ You must not think of it,” I said, 
surprised into decision by Kitty’s absolutely 
misplaced confidence in the power of “a 
man” to decide. “I’ll take the brandy 
myself. Where does the horrid old woman 
live?” 

Kitty shot arrows of reproach at me out 
of her gray eyes. 

Lucilla was almost herself again in a 
moment. 

“ I could not let you go,” she said, with 
the utmost seriousness, “ if you spoke about 
her like that.” 

“ Very well then ! ” I said, in desperation. 
“Where is that angel of an ancient lady? 
To what Heaven am I to turn my steps ? ” 

Kitty, her folded arms along the head 
of the sofa, her head resting on them with 
an inscrutable air like that of a young 
and amiable Sphinx, nodded sagaciously. 

“ How very odd of you,” she said. 
“ Because, you know, the old woman really 
does live in Paradise ! Paradise Eow — No. 
7 —on the ground fioor.” 


DEAWINGEOOM ELOOE 


139 


“I really cannot let you ” began 

Luoilla. 

“Infirm of purpose, give me the bottle!” 
I said, again assuming the decision in which 
Kitty had the innocence to believe. 

Smiling approval, she went to the cup- 
board at once. 

Lucilla must have been very tired, for 
she yielded without more ado. 

“You may as well take these too, Mr. 
Eaph,” went on Kitty, pulling a bunch of 
forget-me-nots out of the china vase in which 
they were blooming. “ Auntie will only 
have to go back to-morrow, if you don’t. 
She always takes a fiower.” 

“ Oh, very well,” I said. “ What else ? ” 

I did not expect the answer that I received. 

“ Would you — would you mind reading her 
a chapter out of the Bible ? ” Luoilla said. 

I was fairly staggered. I had never read 
a chapter of the Bible to anyone. All that 
occurred to me at the moment was to say, 

“ Which ? ” 

“ Isaiah Sixty,” Lucilla instantly rejoined. 


140 


THE LADY ON THE 


I put the brandy bottle in my pocket — 
accepted the forget-me-nots, thoughtfully 
tied up by Kitty with a piece of silk which 
gave way the moment I reached the landing 
— and was preparing in the lowest spirits 
to depart, when Lucilla seemed to think 
that some explanation was necessary. 

“ I go to her on Wednesday nights because 
she is too lame to attend a Service at Chapel 
that she used to like. And she can’t see 
to read to herself. She has a Bible — a Bible 
in large print, and she will be expecting ” 

“Oh, very well,” I said, “I can only 
trust that the magnitude of the transforma- 
tion of the reader will not give her too 
great a shock ; I never have killed anyone 
before, I daresay I shall to-night. But we 
must hope that, come what may, she will 
appreciate my first appearance as a District 
Visitor.” 

“ She’s not a district,” said Kitty plead- 
ingly, “ she’s only a very nice old woman, 
a Mrs. Trump, who used to work for Auntie 
before she grew too blind.” 


DRAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


141 


“ I have no doubt she is charming,” I 
said; “I daresay I shall be passionately in 
love with her by the time I return.” 

For some reason or other, the notion of 
this appealed to Kitty’s sense of the ridicu- 
lous, and she began to laugh, and laughed 
so wildly that at last Lucilla was obliged 
to laugh too. I never felt less like laughing 
in my life. 

“ Oh, Mr. Eaph,” she cried. “ You must 
come and tell us about it when you have 
seen her. Must he not. Auntie ? ” 

Lucilla smiled, but she assented. 

A vague idea of hiring Mahry for half a 
crown to go instead flitted through my mind 
as I made my way down the stairs. But it 
was dark. Lucilla would not have dreamed 
of letting Mahry do what she would not let 
Kitty do ; I knew that well enough. She 
had a code of her own about servants, and 
she told me once that she considered herself 
just as much bound to look after Mahry as 
if she had been her niece. As for the 
angelic old woman, she would evidently, in 


142 


THE LADY ON THE 


the opinion of all concerned, quit Paradise 
Eow for Paradise, unless she got her brandy 
that very night. No, there was nothing for 
it but to go myself ! 

However, it was as Carlyle said of the 
only play that he was ever induced to 
witness, “not so bad as I expected.” 

Shyness is, I have sometimes thought, a 
form of conceit, and shy people are apt to 
exaggerate beforehand the unpleasant effect 
of their presence upon somebody else. 
Except on certain rare occasions, we all 
make less effect than we think we shall. 
Mrs. Trump had, it was clear, seen odder 
things than a small, shy, lame, middle-aged 
gentleman armed with a brandy bottle and 
a bunch of forget-me-nots — undergone ex- 
periences more strange than the sudden 
substitution of him as her chaplain in the 
place of a tall and gracious lady. I took 
to her at once. She was round and round- 
about, had good, kind, straight blue eyes, 
wore an expression like a bowl of bread-and- 
milk, sweetened with sugar. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


143 


“ The ladies is very good to me,” she said, 
as I produced the medicine bottle. “ My 
duty to Miss Z,, sir, please, and tell her it’ll 
do me well till she comes by again. I’m not 
a heavy hand on the drink.” 

There was little air in the room, because 
it was so very full of texts and china 
ornaments, but the lamp gave cheerful light, 
and showed a fern making a gallant struggle 
for existence in the window, and a bowl of 
glass wherein two gold fish swam round and 
round and round till I felt giddy. 

Mrs. Trump explained to me that they 
only cost a penny a piece, that they ate 
nothing but ants’ eggs, which are not, it 
appears, an expensive luxury, and that she 
had the glass bowl for ninepence “off of a 
friend.” She seemed to fear lest I should 
think she had been extravagant in the 
matter of gold fish. Of course I did associate 
them chiefly with the gardens of palaces and 
with passages about a porphyry vase in “ The 
Princess.” All the more did I rejoice to see 
them adorn the unpalatial apartment of Mrs. 


i 


144 


THE LADY ON THE 


Trump, As beheld from above, they were 
about the size of minnows ; but the glass 
had a magical property, and if you looked 
at them from the side they were miniature 
whales. I do not think my cousin studies 
the ways of her Persian cat as Mrs. Trump 
studied those of gold fish. I learned much 
about the fern also — about the ways of ferns 
in general when they live in London. I 
have seen a fine conservatory full of them, 
that gave me less to think upon. 

“ I like a bit o’ green,” Mrs. Trump said. 
She could not walk further than the end of 
the street, but she seemed to possess the 
Park and Kensington Gardens in that one 
flower-pot. 

The interview passed off agreeably on both 
sides, and when I left, I was surprised to 
find that I had lingered in Paradise Eow for 
nearly three-quarters of an hour. 

If my walk thither had not been altogether 
an easy one, my walk thence was the best 
walk that I had taken for many a year. 
Not to my own dark, dingy room was I 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


145 


returning. I was going where I should find 
a welcome, where people would be pleased, 
amused to hear of my doings. How I liked 
passing my own threshold and the darkness 
within ! 

Kitty sprang to open the door as soon 
as she heard my step. Her cheeks were 
flushed because she had been kneeling by 
the fire, she was armed with a toasting fork, 
and a delicious smell of coffee filled the 
room. Lucilla, who was resting on the sofa, 
looked as if she were comforted, and smiled. 

“You’ve been a very long while,” said 
Kitty, with a martial flourish of the toasting 
fork, as though she were prepared to run me 
through if I contradicted her. “We were 
wondering and wondering when you would 
come. You must have ever so many stories 
to tell us. No, not now ! Eat first and 
talk afterwards ! Here is Auntie’s coffee — 
here is a cup for you, nasty black stuff, 
that’s what you like ! and this is a piece 
of toast I made on purpose, just because I 
was tired of waiting ! ” 

11 


146 


THE LADY ON THE 


Kitty was in her element that night, 
Luoilla being too weary to interfere. She 
made much more stir about the little details 
than ever Lucilla did; but it was all as if 
she were playing a very important game ; 
there was no room for any one to say a 
word till she had done. 

“Would you mind holding a skein of silk 
for me while you are talking, Mr. Eaph ? ” 
she said. 

I was become a strangely useful member 
of society. Kitty was the kind of woman 
who always did something herself and caused 
everybody else to do something also. As I 
sat there, my hands caught in that silken 
chain, I thought how pleasant women made 
the night — the night that in my dingy room 
downstairs meant nothing but study or sleep. 

“What’s the silk going to turn into?” I 
enquired. 

“ Embroidery, of course ! ” she rejoined, 
holding up a ridiculously small volume of 
“ Selections from Browning,” ridiculously 
bound in white. “I’ve got a lovely piece 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


147 


of green serge. I’m going to work the ‘ C 
Major of life ’ in the middle.” 

“How absurd!” I said. “A book that 
is not a book at all, only a number of bits 
torn out, bound in white to begin with, and 
in green to go on with, when the very title 
shows that it never ought to be bound in 
anything except brown I ” 

“I don’t care. I don’t care in the least. 
I’m very glad it’s white, not ugly brown, 
and I shall keep it clean and white as long 
as ever I can — all my life 1 ” 

“We have heard nothing yet about Mrs. 
Trump. Did you see the King and Queen 
in biscuit, on the mantelpiece ? ” asked 
Lucilla. 

“ Oh yes — and ‘ Little Samuel,’ and ‘ The 
Huguenot,’ and ‘ The Highlander ’ in the 
green kilt leaning against the pink china 
rock ? ” said Kitty. 

We had not known that there was so 
much to see in Paradise Kow until we came 
to talk about it. We had all seen different 
things, it appeared. 


148 


THE LADY ON THE 


Another hour glided away before we came 
to the end of the discussion. 

“What a delicious evening it has been!” 
observed Kitty, with a touch of regret, as 
she gave me her hand to say good-night. 
“ Dances are awfully jolly, but after all, 
I would rather spend a quiet time like this. 
Auntie, with you and Mr. Kaph.” 

“You would not think of going to a ball 
to-morrow if somebody asked you, oh, not 
you, would you now ? ” Lucilla said. 

“ You’re very naughty indeed, Auntie. 
You have no business to ask questions like 
that ! I shall go straight away back to my 
own house, this minute. Give me my 
cloak, please, Mr. Eaph.” 

I put it round her shoulders ; but even 
then she had so many last words to say to 
Lucilla, — whom she would see again the next 
morning, — that I went down before her. 

As I opened the door of my own room, 
something darted past me up the staircase. 

It was Katerfelto, who had been hiding 
under my table all the while. Then, indeed. 


DEAWINGROOM FLOOR 


149 


was there such jubilation upon the Drawing- 
room floor that, once more summoned by 
Kitty, I was fain to repair thither. Mabry, 
grinning from ear to ear, brought back a 
Jug of milk, Lucilla poured it into the 
Japanese bowl, Kitty sat on the floor and 
laughed. 

“ Well,” I said, “ I should think that cat 
will run away again! If it had saved the 
life of another cat, you could not make more 
fuss about it. Poor beast, how you are 
ruining its character ! Not a chance for 
it to rise in the scale of being ! ” 

The pleasantest evenings, however, must 
come to an end some time. The good-nights 
were said all over again, Kitty had gone 
home, the lights were out, the house had 
sunk into silence, and still I sat, below the 
statue of G-ordon, reading the prophet Isaiah. 
Lucilla had not asked me any question about 
that part of my visit to Paradise Bow. Even 
if I had seen her alone, I could not have told 
her. There was no need to do so, for I am 
sure she knew. The bitterness there had 


150 


THE LADY ON THE 


been in my heart about the poor — about the 
difference between one class and another — 
melted away as I read. 

“ For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I 
mil bring silver, and for wood brass, and for 
stones iron : I will also mahe thy officers peace, 
and thine exactors righteousness.” 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


151 


IX 


N inexplicable shade of difference stole 



over our lives after that ball. Kitty 
was just the same, but Lucilla and I came 
to treat her as if she were more grown up. 
I do not think she noticed it, however. 

The examinations were about to take place 
at the College of Music, and she went there 
oftener for lessons and worked rather more 
when at home. Nothing of that kind lay 
heavy on her soul ; she was not in the least 
nervous. Her calmness of spirit amazed 
Lucilla, who was always more anxious for 
her than she was for herself. She never took 
the highest honours, perhaps because she did 
not seriously try for them ; but she passed 
well and, so to speak, with a little feather in 
her cap, whenever she had the good luck to 


152 


THE LADY ON THE 


meet among the examiners any one who cared 
more for style than for technique. 

As a consequence of the ball, the Nabob 
and Charles I., who had been on calling terms 
before with Lucilla, began to call very often, 
so often indeed that I used to ask Lucilla 
which of them intended to stay permanently. 

She only laughed. 

“ Kitty amuses herself,” said she, “ but her 
heart is quite untouched. It is not, by a long 
way, the first fiirtation of either of those 
young gentlemen. I have had broken hearts 
to mend before now. It will do no harm on 
either side. Besides, she is soon going home ; 
that will put a stop to the whole thing.” 

“ You will miss her,” I said, with sudden 
fear — a sudden hope on top of it, that she 
might need the gentleman downstairs a little 
more. 

The reply was different from that for which 
I looked. 

“ No,” she said bravely, “ I shall not miss 
her : I have always told myself that it would 
not be for long. I have been saying that to 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


153 


myself ever since she came. And by and by, 
when she is married, I will love her child.” 

But Lucilla’s eyes glistened; and I believed 
her eyes rather than her lips. There was pain 
in my heart for her, and — stronger than the 
pain — the hope that she might need me more. 

I cannot remember how it came to pass — 
the very vividness of certain moments 
annihilates those which precede them — but 
on a night of later July we were sitting, 
all three, by the piano, and an unwonted 
silence had fallen among us. Lucilla had 
but to listen as a rule — to listen as she always 
listened — and Kitty’s tongue ran on ; but that 
night she listened in vain. I thought perhaps 
the child might have some girlish confidence 
to make, and rose to go. 

“ No, Mr. Raph,” said Kitty. “ You are 
not going yet. You never go so soon as this. 
Auntie, we won’t let him go ! ” 

And I stayed, because, following the 
example of Lucilla, I always did what Kitty 
wanted. 


154 


THE LADY ON THE 


“ She is so sensible,” Lucilla used to say. 

As for being sensible, she was neither more 
nor less sensible than other people of her age, 
she was entirely capricious, but Lucilla liked 
to think she was sensible — liked to believe, 
I think, that she had made her so. Or else, 
being accustomed to command, it amused 
her for once to obey. 

But although Lucilla asked me to stay — and 
though I meant to stay before she asked 
me and stayed accordingly — and though 
there were as many things in the world to 
talk about as ever, that uncomfortable silence 
fell again, and fell heavily. 

Now Kitty in the part of the Silent Woman 
was Kitty in a part with which I was not 
familiar, and I did not know what to do 
with her. It was not the happy silence that 
Lucilla and I enjoyed so often. Girls under 
twenty are ignorant of that. When they are 
silent it is because they are shy or sad, or 
because they cannot find words — not because 
they have passed into a region where there 
is no need of them. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


155 


“ How lovely the stars are to-night ! ” 
Lucilla said. 

I have noticed that people will talk 
about the stars when they have nothing 
else to say. Strange presumption of human 
nature, to drag those vast worlds in, that 
we may escape a momentary embarrassment ! 
If we saw things as they are, we should be 
afraid to speak of the stars. With Lucilla, 
however far afield she might roam, something 
practical was sure to follow. I waited, and 
it did. 

“ Let us draw our chairs up to the window ! 
It seems a pity to shut them out.” 

She signed to me to lift the sash higher, 
and the cool soft evening air crept into the 
little room and lightened the tension. A 
curious chequer-work of light and shadow, 
thrown from her own lamp and from some- 
body else’s in another house, diversified the 
blank wall opposite. A bar of black roof 
stretched in a straight line above. Straight 
black lines of chimneys shot up from it. At 
right angles went a row of dusky houses, 


156 


THE LADY ON THE 


with windows like dim, veiled eyes, here 
and there faintly shining. An infant moon 
curled, feather-like, behind the chimneys. 
The stars shone thick and bright. 

All at once Kitty began to speak. 

“ I wonder if there are people up there. 
Do you think there are, Mr. Eaph ? ” 

“ Have you been reading “ The Story of 
the Heavens ? ” I asked. It was a favourite 
book of Lucilla’s. 

“No. I can’t read. What’s the use of it ? 
I never take in anything unless it’s what I’ve 
thought before. Then I write Glorious all 
down the page. Then I think, ‘ How silly ! 
when it’s only my own thought stuck into 
words that I couldn’t find.’ ” 

“ Have you thought all the thoughts that 
are in all the books, dear ? ” 

“ 0 Auntie, I didn’t mean to be conceited ! 
I only meant that, if I haven’t thought the 
thought, it’s no use reading the words ; I 
can’t understand.” 

“When you are older you will think 
differently. Books give me my thoughts.” 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


157 


“ What is being older ? ” said Kitty, 
wrinkling her forehead. “ It seems to me 
so funny to put people’s ages on their tomb- 
stones. How can it possibly be true ? One 
person has lived ever so long in five minutes. 
Another has never been alive at all for fifty 
years. Browning says, when we’re happy 
there’s nothing except Now. That’s true, of 
course ; I had to write Glorious all down the 
margin just before I came in to you. 

“ It is not true,” Lucilla said. “ There 
was always Yesterday ; there will always be 
To-morrow.” 

“Not if you’re living. Auntie — not if 
you’re really alive, alive all the time. And 
if you’ve once been alive — really alive every 
bit of you — alive in some one else — it can’t 
matter when they die, or when you do. It’s 
all the same. It’s not the house they live in 
that you care about. Why should you mind ? ” 

“ We must mind, dear ! ” Lucilla said, very 
tenderly, but as if she were alarmed. The 
subject went too near her heart for discussion, 
I could see that ; and yet I had no wish to let 


158 


THE LADY ON THE 


it drop. Something in Kitty’s earnest way 
of speech appealed to me. She seemed to be 
my own youth speaking, although, at her age, 
I could not have spoken. Just in that way 
I used to feel about the insignificance of 
death. The deceiver that we call Experience 
had taken away my early trust, but when I 
heard her speak I knew she came nearer the 
truth. Besides, the power of death cannot 
be felt till it is known, and though the young 
think of it more often than we do, words 
cannot give them any idea of this. No, let 
their blessed ignorance remain ! There is 
more faith in it than lies within the 
compass of our knowledge. 

I tried a strain of thought which I knew 
that Lucilla would not follow. 

“If we could remember that Time is an 
illusion — that it is only our way of thinking 
things, one after the other ” 

“ Yes ” — Kitty caught me up eagerly — 
“then it wouldn’t matter, would it, if one 
went away, and the other were left — if one 
died and the other were left ? ” 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


159 


“ It would always matter,” Luoilla said 
in grave, distressed tones. “ There’s only 
one sorrow that can be worse.” 

“ I think I’ve got no heart, Auntie. It’s 
fast asleep in me. To-night I shall lie awake 
and think of all the dreadful things I’ve 
said to you and Mr. Eaph. I don’t know 
what to do now for thinking of them. I 
don’t know why I’ve talked like this. I 
never do it to anybody else. It’s something 
in the way you listen. Oh, I am very sorry ! 
I know I am not old enough to talk. You 
and Mr. Eaph never said a word — you only 
helped me along. 0, will you both forget 
it, please ? Will you promise me not to 
remember ? Will you let it all go, the 
minute I’ve shut the door ? ” 

Her words came hurrying out, vehement, 
eager, as if she had let some terrible secret 
fly, and were trying to catch it again. 

I would have comforted her if I could, but 
my phrases were clumsy, they did not meet 
the winged need of the moment. Lucilla 
said nothing; she drew the girl down on to 


160 


THE LADY ON THE 


her knee as if she had been a little child, and 
held her fast. 

The clock of a neighbouring church struck 
in, and reminded Kitty that, whatever her 
theories of eternity might happen to be, it 
was now, by mortal time, ten o’clock. 

“ Oh dear, I ought to go ! ” she cried. “ I 
feel as if I can’t — as if this talking would 
cling about the room when I’m gone. Why 
did I talk ? ” She rose to throw her cloak 
round her, protesting all the time. She 
turned to me, took both my hands in hers, 
looked in my face with something in her gray 
eyes that I had never seen there before — then 
flung her arms round Lucilla’s neck, rested a 
moment against her, and went. 

Lucilla followed. 

The sweet voices were gone ; there was no 
sound but the light rasping of a withered leaf 
against the rough brick wall. I was left alone 
in that room where I was never alone. 
Memory rose in her strength and took posses- 
sion. She blinded and deafened me so that I 
did not heed Lucilla’s return nor observe 
anything until I heard her sigh. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 161 

“ What is the matter ? ” I said, awaking 
with an effort. 

“ I wish Kitty would not talk like that of 
things she knows nothing about.” 

“ She is very humble, really.” 

“ Do you think that ? I am glad. I felt so 
much afraid that you should think her vain.” 

“ No,” I said. “ You were right.” 

“ What do you mean ? ” 

It was her turn to look startled now. 

“ Do not you see what lay behind all that 
talk?” I said. “She cares for someone. 
She is trying to face the thought of what it 
would be to her if he died. That’s why she 
felt as if she had told a secret — as if she could 
not forgive herself.” 

Lucilla thought for several minutes. 

“ Yes,” she said at last, with a dawning 
smile. “ Yes. Perhaps it may be so. I 
believe you are right.” 

There was no pretext for staying any 
longer. I wished her good-night. I suppose 
she wished me the same; but notwithstanding, 
I spent a bad one. 


12 


162 


THE LADY ON THE 


X 



HEN I came home from a business 


^ ^ visit to the Eecord next day, I was 
met by the information that Miss Kitty had 
left that morning. It did not surprise me. No 
doubt she wanted to consult her own people. 

There was a dismal sense of flatness about 
the house. 

Mahry was going about with red eyes, she 
had evidently wept for several hours. I heard 
the landlady’s shrill voice scolding away in 
the kitchen. The landlord looked more wist- 
ful, more resigned than before. Miss Kitty’s 
box had come unlocked at the last minute, 
he explained, and no power on earth would 
induce it to lock. They had called him in 
next door, but he could do nothing. He 
seemed to imply that I could have done some- 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


163 


thing if I had had the sense to be present. 
“ Young ladies didn’t know what they was 
going to encounter.” In his opinion, it was 
tempting Providence to start with a box that 
would not lock. 

After dinner, as I was sitting listlessly 
enough in the dusk, thinking how twenty-four 
hours may make another evening “Long 
ago,” there was a tap at my door, and Lucilla 
entered. 

She took my breath away. 

It was the first time she ever came to my 
room — and the last. How I should have 
prepared for her, if I had known she was 
coming ! But things are best as they are. 
At any rate I am not much of a smoker, and 
if there was no scent of flowers, there was no 
smell of tobacco. The kindly twilight would 
not let her see how different my room looked 
from her own. 

I have honoured her coming since she went 
away, if I did not honour it before. In the 
chair that she occupied no one has sat since ; 
though I dust nothing else, I dust that. 


164 


THE LADY ON THE 


I could feel rather than see that she looked 
radiant. She held a telegram in her hand. 

“ News ! ” she said, a little breathlessly. 
“I was obliged to come and share it with 
you. You were right, Kitty is engaged.” 

“Which is it? Not Charles I., I hope? 
The Nabob would be better than that.” 

“ Neither of them ! An organist— a good 
serious young man — almost handsome. He 
has just passed out of College with the 
highest honours. He gave her the little white 
Browning that I admired so much. Don’t 
you remember how she scolded you when you 
said Browning ought to be bound in brown ? ” 

I did not choose to recollect. 

“ Has he anything else to give her ? ” 

“ 0 yes ! He has been offered a very good 
post in Australia. They will have quite 
enough to live upon.” 

“ A long way off,” I said. “ Why are you 
so much pleased ? ” 

“Because she is happy,” Lucilla said; and 
paused as if she had mentioned something 
sacred. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 165 

“ I could not tell you before,” she went on. 
“ She only spoke to me this morning, just 
before the train started. She thought she 
ought to tell her mother first. I was not 
to say anything to you until I got the 
telegram to say she was with her mother. 
It came ten minutes ago. — She will make 
the dearest little wife, will she not ? ” 

“ Just like anybody else’s,” I said. “ An 
enormous family of course, marrying so young 
— eleven or twelve children.” 

“ That would not be in the least like 
Kitty,” said Lucilla, very much hurt. 

“ Oh well,” I said, “ I daresay she will be 
more tiresome still about one or two.” 

Lucilla rose. 

“ I am sorry that I came,” she said ; “I 
did not know that you — that you were busy. 
I thought you really loved her. She sent 
you such a sweet message of goodbye. She 
wanted you to want her to be happy.” 

“I wish her every happiness,” I said. 
“ But she will never be so happy again as 
she was with you.” 


166 


THE LADY OF THE 


It vexed me that Lucilla should make such 
a tremendous point of some one else’s getting 
married, when she was not married herself. 

It vexed me that I should have appeared 
to her in my own hard, true colours. 

I spent another bad night. 

The next day I pretended that I had never 
behaved like that. And Lucilla pretended 
that I had not either. There are some 
occasions in life, when, between friends, this 
is the only way to ask — and to receive — for- 
giveness. 

Everything turned out just as I knew it 
would. 

A few months later, the giver of Browning 
endowed Kitty with all his worldly goods — 
there were not many of them, — and she went 
out with him to his new post in Australia. 

Lucilla did not attend the wedding. 

“I cannot trust myself,” she said. 

I knew then that she thought Australia 
a very long way off. 

I was asked too, as a matter of form, but 
I could not feel sorry that the state of my 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


167 


finances made it impossible for me to accept 
the kind invitation. 

In the long winter evenings that followed, 
Lucilla would often read aloud merry letters 
from the other side of the world. We 
laughed together as we made out, from 
Kitty’s rough plans and sketches, where every 
bit of furniture stood in her tiny drawing' 
room, where every picture hung. 

“ It must be like a doll’s house,” Lucilla 
said, and smiled when she came to a passage 
describing how Kitty hung the Portrait of the 
Unknown, which I had given her at her own 
request, over the fireplace, to remind her of 
Mr. Eaph. 

One little letter came to my address, to 
thank me for the picture — but I did not keep 
nor did I answer it. There would be always 
a message for me, and I would send a message 
back. But she was gone out of my life. 

For a short time I felt grievously the loss 
of the brightness, of the youth of the house. 
Then I became reconciled to such a point 
that I did not even desire her return. 


168 _ THE LADY ON THE 

Kitty had shown me what being young 
meant. 

My own youth, after the first, had been 
rather like other people’s old age. The acci- 
dent that lamed me for life ruined my health 
for a time. I had spent many winters abroad, 
in frugal pensions, among maiden ladies and 
yet more maidenly widows, until I felt like 
a widow or an old maid myself. When I 
came back to England well and strong, no 
one believed it. My cousin shut every 
window as soon as I entered her drawing- 
room and was careful never, unless of course 
she really “ wanted a man,” to ask me out 
to dinner, “ Because, poor fellow, he cannot 
stand the night air.” It was the absence 
of the night air that I could not stand; I 
was careful not to enlighten her. 

But, if Kitty had shown me what being 
young was like, she had also made me feel 
older than ever I felt before. She clearly 
thought Lucilla so very old; and if Lucilla 
were very old, I shrewdly suspected that I 
must be older still. For people like Lucilla — 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


169 


and like me — she knew, of course, that life 
was over. She took it for granted that I had 
lived — once upon a time — but I, who only 
once, for a moment had known what she 
called life, was silently cast down by the 
thought that she knew I could never live 
now. She turned the key in the lock for 
me as I had not yet turned it for myself. 

When she was gone we resumed our former 
pleasant and peaceful ways. One habit 
Lucilla had not lost while Kitty was with 
us. She always continued to play for me 
on Sundays. I had gone rather more often 
of an evening too : she said it amused Kitty, 
and now she did not discourage my atten- 
dance. I had no feeling whatever that she 
needed me; but I was not in her way. 

Still, that which had come and passed so 
quickly, did not leave us as it had found 
us. We were not quieter after Kitty went, 
we had been just as quiet before — but we 
were more conscious of tranquillity. There 
was not the flutter of wings that I had always 
heard about the room when she was there — 


170 


THE LADY ON THE 


the sense of the strange unrest — the ever- 
varying charm of Spring. 

If I had turned octogenarian, Lucilla 
seemed younger for the change, I thought. 
While Kitty was there she had taken her 
proper position as the experienced Aunt-like 
friend, the one who Tinew where youth was 
only guessing. It amused me to hear her 
wise, proverbial sayings when all the time 
I was aware, in secret, that the heart in her 
bosom beat with sympathy as keen and as 
unreasonable as that of the girl who sat 
perched on the arm of her chair. I never 
tried to be proverbial. Kitty shared her own 
youth with me in her joy; but speaking as 
she did on that last night, under the stars, 
she threw me back on old forgotten feelings, 
with such force that I shivered and hid my 
eyes. When we say. It is good to he young^ 
we forget that at the same time it is terrible. 
I shook the recollection oS as soon as I could, 
but ever after I felt the older for it. 


DEAWINGKOOM FLOOE 


171 


XI 


HAT a comfort it is, to be middle- 



aged ! ” Lucilla said, one day. 


“ Some of the pleasure of being young is 
gone, not the happiness — and there is more 
freedom.” 

“ I cannot imagine that you were ever in 
bondage to public opinion,” I said, smiling. 
“ Have you not always done just what you 
liked ? ” 

“ I suppose I have, more or less,” she 
answered, as if she were amused. “ But 
when I was young, I did what I liked, and 
it worried the aunt with whom I lived — 
she disliked it very much. Sometimes she 
worried me. And sometimes I liked things 
that were mere vanity. It seemed as if 
coloured veils hung between me and the true 


172 


THE LADY ON THE 


things that I wanted. Now I know what 
they are. One is happier really, reckoning it 
all up together — don’t you think so ? ” 

“I am happier than I have ever been,” I 
said, as we say the truest things of all, with- 
out any intention to do so. 

Lucilla made no response. She did not 
ask me why. 

She was gazing into the fire. As I sat and 
looked at her, I thought again what happiness 
it was to see her, to be near her, to hear her 
voice. Othello’s words came flashing to my 
mind : 

it were now to die, 

'Twere now to be most happy; for, I fear 
My soul hath her content so absolute, 

That not another comfort like to this 
Succeeds in unknown fate.” 

Not that I had the slightest wish to die. I 
should have liked to go on living as we were 
living then, always. 

Never without something of a shock, even 
now, do I recollect the minute that followed 
— the minute in which it first crossed my 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


173 


mind that Luoilla was hiding something from 
me. Had any one asked the question, I 
should have been puzzled to say what it was 
that she ever confided. I was wont to enter 
her thoughts as she entered mine, without 
any knocking at the door in set sentences. 
Suddenly — plainly — mysteriously — the door 
was shut. We were sitting by the fire 
together. Just as we had sat many a week 
before ; but in a moment she went her way, 
and I was left. 

My way led, earlier than usual, down to my 
own room, where I sat and pondered. 

Was she displeased ? 

Was she unhappy ? 

Was she — hateful thought ! — thinking of 
some one else ? For some want of reason or 
other, I could not get this last supposition out 
of my head. Such a strong sensation of 
hatred started up in me that it seemed ridicu- 
lous to have no object for the feeling. It 
must be a third, a shadowy third that had 
come between. Whatever, whoever it might 
be, he was hateful. 


174 


THE LADY ON THE 


Why had I not stayed on, and affronted the 
question boldly ? 

What are you thinking of? Is there any- 
thing easier to say than those words ? Why 
had not I said them ? She was frank and 
candid as a child. Evasion, subterfuge, were 
things unknown to her. If she did not desire 
to speak upon a given subject, she told me 
so, and there was an end. It would have 
been easy to ask at once ; and now it was 
impossible. 

Perhaps I dreaded the answer. But would 
not any answer she could give be preferable to 
those which I was inventing for her ? 

What was it that had happened ? What 
was it that, in a moment, divided her from 
me ? 

Could I have been mistaken ? Was it 
some absurd fancy of mine? 

I tried to think so, but I could not. Cer- 
tain impressions of the mind are tangible as 
outward facts. If a wall had erected itself 
between me and my heart’s friend, I could 
not have been more firmly convinced. 


DRAWINGEOOM FLOOR 


175 


Well ! Two days more, and Thursday 
would come round. I must learn something 
then. 

Meantime I found an extraordinary interest 
in work. I went to see my cousin. I studied 
the questions of the day. I read books. It 
was all curiously stale, flat, and unprofitable. 
At every turn I thought of something that 
I wanted to say to Lucilla, of something 
that I wanted to hear her say. Politics were 
the only comfort. She was not a newspaper 
woman. The Spectator once a week more 
than satisfied her. Over the intricacies of a 
Bill I could sometimes forget her; she was 
tangled up with everything else. 

On Wednesday night, however, Mabry 
brought me a note from the Lady on the 
Drawingroom floor. Lucilla begged to inform 
the gentleman downstairs that she was com- 
pelled to go out on Thursday. 

Compelled ! Who or what was compelling 
her ? 

I began to wish that I were very ill. If 
anything were ill, I had never known Lucilla 


176 


THE LADY ON THE 


deny herself the pleasure of taking care of it. 
If I were ill, she would hear from the land- 
lady, and I knew, I felt sure, that she would 
come. But we are ill when we are ill — not 
when we should like to be ill. 

Somebody else was ill perhaps. Who could 
it be ? 

Was it of this that she was thinking when 
the barriers rose up and remained ? 

If she chose to have another person there, 
some being whom I could not see, some 
creature whom she preferred to her visible 
guest, she might have him all to herself, I 
was resolved to share with none. I would not 
go again. Next time she asked me, I would 
refuse. 

Thursday week, however, was a long way 
off. Was there nothing to be done in the 
meantime ? I supposed she would play as 
usual on Sunday evening ; it did not occur to 
me that she could fail there ! 

I composed a satirical appeal for a piece of 
music on a theme that I had never suggested 
before, Souvent fevime varie, and I requested 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


177 


Mahry to take it up on Sunday evening ; but 
she gave me no chance. For the first time in 
our long tenantry of the house in Back Street 
together, when I asked Mahry to take up 
the little note as usual, I was met by the 
announcement, “Miss Z. is out.” 

I am ashamed to say how late I sat up, 
waiting to hear Miss Z. let herself in. 

I reproached myself. Perhaps I had let her 
see, when I left so early, that I felt annoyed. 
She had gone out, on purpose, to avoid play- 
ing. It was very good of her to play for me 
every Sunday; perhaps she was tired of it. 
Yet had I been no ungrateful listener. I had 
enjoyed this music far too much to think 
about the kindness. I imagined — was I 
wrong ? — that she enjoyed it also. I had 
experienced little of the pleasure of intimate 
sympathy in my single life, and now I grew 
alarmed. What if it went ? What if I had 
killed it ? All the kindness in the world could 
not take the place of that. With every turn 
of the clock I grew more wretched. 

Some deadly accident of course had hap- 
13 


178 


THE LADY ON THE 


pened — a judgment on me, because I had not 
valued this treasure while it was mine. 

She had fallen from a ’bus. 

She was imprisoned in the depths of an 
underground tunnel. 

She was lying, desperately wounded, in 
some Hospital where nobody knew who she 
was. 

London became the den of horrors that it 
really is. How did she dare to walk alone in 
it ? How could I ever have let her go ? 

It fretted me past bearing, that neither the 
landlord, nor the landlady, nor Mahry, be- 
trayed any anxiety whatsoever. 

Called up and questioned as to whether she 
had left word that she should be away for the 
night, Mahry stared and said, 

“ Naow, sir ! ” 

Called up and questioned, after Mahry had 
presumably gone to bed, as to the state of the 
weather, the landlord opined that the streets 
were like glass and there would be several 
people would have broke their legs in to- 
morrer morning’s “Dyly Myle” ; but when I 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


179 


said that ladies ought not to be out on such 
a night, he only remarked that Miss Z. went 
out in all weathers, and she was a real lady, 
she was, and it never seemed to do her no 
harm. 

As for the landlady, I heard her going 
callously upstairs Just as usual, after she had 
turned out the gas in the hall and left a 
candle and a box of matches on the bracket. 

At length. Just as I was preparing to start 
on a tour of inspection of St. George’s, the 
Brompton Consumptive, the Workhouse In- 
firmary, &o., &c., I heard the key turn in the 
lock and knew Lucilla had come in. She 
came in Just as if it were twelve o’clock in the 
middle of the day instead of midnight. I 
detected neither haste nor delay in the sound 
of her footsteps. I retired to bed in a state of 
virtuous indignation with her for being heart- 
lessly unaware that she had caused me to 
spend hours of torment. She ought to have 
known — she, who always did know. 

Next morning I thought again, very seri- 
ously, of the engagement that was to engage 


180 


THE LADY ON THE 


me that evening — or on Thursday — or when- 
ever she condescended to ask me upstairs 
again. Certainly she deserved that. There 
was plenty of time before me. I need not 
invent it yet. The afternoon would do. 

No note came down, however. I had 
never gone on Monday without a note. Of 
course I did not go. 

Well, Wednesday would do for that 
invention ! 

And yet, when Wednesday came, my one 
dread was, lest Mahry should bring me an- 
other note ; for on Thursday— it was the 
old arrangement — I went without one. 

Wednesday came. 

Wednesday passed. 

The Ides of March were over. I forgot 
all about the engagement that was to engage 
me on the day following. I went to bed 
happier than I had been for a fortnight, and 
rose with a delicious sense of lightness. 

A fortnight ? It was a hundred years since 
I had seen her ! 

When I hobbled upstairs to the drawing- 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


181 


room floor at the accustomed hour, I felt like 
a schoolboy coming home for the holidays. 
I felt as if I had neither eaten nor drunk for 
several weeks. Yet was there a beating fear 
of difference, a shrinking in me lest that 
which had been so long, so happily, the same, 
should have changed. Better for me, if this 
were so, not to have left my dingy room 
again ! 

I had not crossed the threshold before all 
these fears vanished. 

Katerfelto lay, fat and round, before the 
fire, and purred a little when I scratched 
his ear. 

The parrot let down a skinny membrane 
half over his eye, which was his horrid way 
of winking, and said, as if he were making 
a confidential communication : 

“ How are you? ” 

Betsinda rose from her three-legged stool 
and made a curtsey — she had learned how 
from Kitty and was rather proud of it; and 
I made Betsinda a bow. She brought me 
my cup and saucer very carefully without 


182 


THE LADY ON THE 


spilling a drop, and was rewarded with a 
piece of cake, which she ate with the utmost 
decorum. 

“ Now, Betty,” Lucilla said, “ you may 
make us another curtsey and run away.” 

Betsinda vanished, regretfully but without 
demur, Mahry removed the tea-things, Kater- 
felto walked out of the room after her, the 
parrot went to sleep on his perch, and Lucilla 
and I were alone once more. 

“ Lucilla ! ” I said at once, not giving 
myself time to reflect, “ what were you think- 
ing of, this day fortnight ? ” 

“ I was thinking of some one whom I shall 
never see again,” she answered quietly. 

A feeling like remorse checked any answer 
that I might have made. I had been jealous 
of him. Poor fellow ! and he was dead. 

“ It is wrong to forget,” she said, after a 
pause. “If we are not true to those whom 
we cannot see, we are not true to those whom 
we can.” 

“ He is — he is often with you ? ” I asked. 

“ He was always with me until this time 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 183 

last year,” she replied, no tremor in her voice, 
but a seriousness of conviction as if she had 
made some statement against herself. 

“ You would never forget any one. You 
are constant by nature.” 

She shook her head sadly. 

“ I thought so once ; but it is not like that. 
I did forget. When we talked about being 
happy the other night, something you said 
showed me that it was not like that.” 

I began to wish that she would forget 
again. After all, what was the use of 
remembering? It did the poor fellow him- 
self no good, and it made me uncomfortable. 

“ If,” I said sturdily, “ if I were dead, I 
should not care to be remembered — much. 
Not if remembering had to be kept up, you 
know.” 

Lucilla’s eyes flashed for a minute, but 
she said nothing. 

I was concerned to defend her against 
herself. I really thought she was behaving 
with a singular lack of good sense. 

“ What is the use of pretending that you 


184 


THE LADY ON THE 


care more than you do ? ” I said. “ It is not 
even sincere.” 

She changed the subject with a dignity 
that made me feel as much ashamed of my- 
self as if I had broken all the Ten Com- 
mandments at once. 

We talked on ; but on my side, at any rate, 
there was a difference. It was better than 
not seeing Lucilla at all. How “like a 
winter ” had her absence been ! And I did 
not feel constrained to leave abruptly, as on 
the last occasion. Yet it was not so good as 
it had been before. Still the visionary third 
came between. 

He had astonished me into surprise at my- 
self as well as at Lucilla : and I was almost 
as much annoyed with him for the one cause 
as for the other. 

After I had returned to my own apartment, 
I sat a long time, pondering over his ante- 
cedents. 

A charming person, no doubt — otherwise 
Lucilla would not have cared for him. 

Handsome of course, and all that. “A 


DEAWINGKOOM FLOOE 


185 


leg,” like Sir Willoughby Patterne, a 
“ balustrade leg ! ” Mine, I felt conscious, 
though I had never thought of it before, 
must distress Lucilla. She did not let me 
see ; that was only part of her kindness. 

He must have had a fine manner also — 
not gauche and awkward. 

I wondered if he had ever sat alone with 
her. As I wondered, I hated him furiously ; 
and, in a minute, all my anger turned to 
commiseration. 

Poor fellow ! He was dead. 

It was this that had surprised me in the 
first instance. I am not wont to pity the 
dead. I never pitied one of them in all my 
life before. What ! Pity those who are, 
beyond all power to think it, free ? Not I ! 

The only men among the dead whom I 
dared to pity were those who died without 
having lived; and even those I pitied less 
than when they moved upon this lovely earth, 
not seeing it. Perhaps I was wrong there. 
Who shall say? I had known lives that 
were to me so piteous, that I was afraid to 


186 


THE LADY ON THE 


waste my pity on those who were — I could 
not but think it — better off. 

Dying is bad, of course. 

For myself I looked forward to dying — 
to the mere act of transition — sometimes with 
a sudden cold anguish of horror and surprise 
— at other times with such a high-wrought 
curiosity of interest that it was rapture — 
sometimes with complete indifference. If I 
die in a moment — or in my sleep — it can be 
no great matter. I have rehearsed it in a 
faint. The common lot involves greater 
suffering than that, and death, in whatever 
form it may draw near, is “ violent death.” 
I have often thought it strange that people 
should bestow more compassion on a murdered 
man than on one who has lain a-dying for 
years. Outwardly, man appears to be more 
merciful about this work, no torture that he 
invents can equal the pain of slow disease. 
But death, when it comes, causes the dead to 
forget even the terror of their dying. How- 
ever they may have suffered, the look upon 
the face of the dead is the seal of the solution 
of all tragedy in divine peace. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


187 


“ Poor Oliver ! ” 

I used to think how my cousin, who will 
certainly live to be ninety, bar accidents, 
would say this over me, and would perhaps 
feel really very sorry as she did so. I should 
be far away, beyond her pity, no longer lame, 
no longer bound by all the chains of Illusion. 
I thought of it with deep humility, with trust 
in that Forgiveness which is Love, with hope. 
I thought also that I should see my friend 
again. 

I did not care for funerals. Therein I in- 
curred the reproach of my cousin. 

“ Every one should wish to pay the last 
tribute of respect, she said. 

Funerals gave a neat finish to friendship in 
her opinion ; but for me friendship did not 
end there. 

I needed no other company than that of 
one dead man. Long ago I had smiled 
when my cousin said to me in a sympathetic 
voice, “ You must feel so lonely in the even- 
ings, Oliver ! ” Often I had refused to leave my 
room because, to leave it meant leaving him. 


188 


THE LADY ON THE 


As I recalled these things, I seemed to 
creep into a strange sense of emptiness. I 
found that it was long since he had come 
to me. Had I also begun to forget? 

The dead are jealous; they will not come 
when there is any thought of others. Of late, 
as I sat in my rich solitude, I had thought 
of Lucilla. 

My old fears of her returned upon me in 
full force. What was this that she had done 
to me ? She had taken away the dead. 

Not content with that, she had brought 
her own — a dead man whom I had never 
seen, to haunt me perpetually. 

Why had she thought of him always “until 
this time last year ? ” It was eighteen 
months now since Kitty had left us. Why, 
this last year, had she ceased to remember ? 

This began to be worse than anything 
else. After all, the dead man was not my 
rival, but my fellow. She must have given 
him up for some one living. 

With lightning swiftness the conviction 
struck me down, that this explained her 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


189 


absence. She had gone out to meet the 
living man, whoever he might be. Why did 
he not come to her ? Much as I should 
dislike his coming, it would be better than 
to know that she went to him. Perhaps he 
did come, though I knew it not. There were 
long hours of almost every day when I was 
out. 

Yet, if this were her strange way of telling 
me, I did not know what she had told. 

She had let me see that she was displeased 
with herself. It might be, after all, that 
she did not care — that the dead man was the 
stronger of the two. 

Was this really so? Or did she only 
deceive herself? 

She deceived herself, that was clear. She 
might forget for a moment — not for a year; 
and only now had she remembered her 
forgetfulness. 

If I pitied even the enviable dead man 
because he was not alive to be loved by 
Lucilla, what were 'my feelings towards his 
successor ? 


190 


THE LADY ON THE 


There is considerable doubt as to what they 
should have been — and none at all as to 
what they were. I considered him very 
presumptuous. 

What business had he to trouble a mind 
that had long ago ceased to be ruffled by 
the storms of youth ? If he made her go 
to him, he was not showing her due respect. 
If he did not take the trouble to come 
himself, how could he be in earnest? I 
would have given the world to know whether 
he did come. I was frantic at the thought 
that Mahry must know perfectly well what it 
was life or death for me to know — and I 
could not. I went the length of proposing 
to myself to sit at home a whole day and 
watch. Fool! I might hear the hall door 
open, but could I rush out into the passage, 
or peep through the keyhole ? Any one who 
would might come and go, and I be never 
the wiser. Besides, hot shame overtook me 
when I found that I was turning spy. 
Again, again, what had Lucilla done to me ? 

It was not Lucilla, it was the man. Did 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


191 


she then care for him, seeing she had 
forgotten the dead on his account ? My 
sympathies were with the dead. 

I began to feel a kind of friendship for 
that dead man. She had never neglected 
me for him as she did for the other. Now 
she had forgotten him, forgotten me. I also 
was numbered among the dead. 

She had reposed great confidence in me 
when she spoke of him. In a few words the 
secret of much lay hidden. 

It was for his sake that she lived unmarried 
in Back Street — that she who, whatever she 
might say about it, loved children, had no 
child of her own. It was perhaps for his 
sake that she had been kind to me — a lonely 
fellow with no one to care about him. But 
there I drew up. I hated that she should 
be kind to me for anybody’s sake except my 
own. I could not but think that, after all, 
she was my friend — my own. 

Well — what was my course to be hence- 
forward ? 

If she cared for this other — had cared for 


192 


THE LADY ON THE 


him a year — she would marry him, I supposed. 
It was only natural to suppose that, once she 
was married, she would leave the house. 

Leave the house! 

I am ashamed of the turn that my re- 
flections took at this point. Life, as people 
older than Kitty know, is made up of little 
things; that is the only excuse — and it is 
worse than none at all. 

A nightmare vision of the house, as it had 
been before Lucilla came, rose up before me. 

Mahry, I felt sure, would go with her. 
There would be another Mahry, like the first, 
her matted hair down her back, her shoes 
down at heel. The landlady would cook just 
as she used to cook. 

There would be no Thursdays in the week, 
no Sundays — no music, not a note. 

In the bitterness of my heart I wished that 
Lucilla had never come. Before she came I 
had not missed the harmony she brought, 
except with a vague sense of something 
absent. Now it was not a question of 
missing, but of definite and most serious loss. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


193 


My feeling towards the dead man grew 
more friendly than ever. He had been a 
good neighbour. So long as he remained 
alone with Lucilla, I was happy. 

I must know whether she was going to 
be faithful to him. 

I could not ask. 

Clearly she was not. She had been un- 
faithful for the last year. She would not 
have told me this now, if she had not meant 
me to understand that she was going to give 
him up — with regret it might be — with self- 
reproach — for some one dearer. 

Well ! Had she not a right to do so ? 
I had been on her side against herself. I 
had told her that fidelity to something 
remembered that you did not, of your own 
accord remember, was rubbish. People think 
that they can deceive the dead very easily. 
He could not speak for himself, and I had 
spoken for him. My sympathies were with 
the dead. 


14 


194 


THE LADY ON THE 


XII 

/^N the Sunday following I asked Lucilla 
to play — not mentioning that this 
time it would be in memory of a friend — 
the movement following on Chopin’s Funeral 
March — the Dead Leaf movement — where 
the dead boughs are whirled about the grave. 

She might well consecrate as much re- 
membrance as that to the memory of her 
own friend, I reflected. I wondered whether 
he had been a soldier, and fallen, like him 
I loved, in battle. Yes, that was it ! That 
must be it. That was why, from the first, 
she had understood. 

Again I caught myself thinking rather 
of her friend than of mine. 

She played the March, however, and not 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


195 


the Dead Leaf movement. She played in 
the old, beautiful way, as if she were pour- 
ing out her heart, as she had seldom played 
while Kitty was with her — and not, I think, 
since Kitty left. There again, music is 
language, but it has no words; nor could 
I tell what was being spoken. Was it 
unutterable fidelity ? or only unutterable 
regret that all things pass ? She was 
making confidences, she was crying out 
from the depths of her soul, but I did not 
know what she said. 

I was in a miserable ecstasy while it 
lasted. Afterwards the ecstasy went; and 
I was miserable and nothing else. 

Why? 

There was no reason at all. 

I recollected fits of this absurd, aimless, 
disproportioned wretchedness, in the days 
of youth. In my freedom from that con- 
dition I had rejoiced for many years. Here 
I was, no better than twenty-five again! 

I took myself to task finely, the next 
morning. It was all nonsense. It interfered 


196 


THE LADY ON THE 


with work, and with friendship. It was 
ridiculous of me to go on making myself 
unhappy because Lucilla was not unhappy 
enough about someone who had died — Heaven 
knew how many years ago — someone I had 
never seen ! 

Let me put away idle sentiment and 
every thought of the rivals, living and 
dead, who were contending for Lucilla’s 
affection ! Let them fight it out as they 
would ! They were nothing to me. Let 
me make the most of what the gods had 
given ! Let me “ keep my pittance clear 
from poison of repining ! ” My part was 
to rejoice in her friendship so long as it 
remained — to help her if I could, if I dared, 
to be true to herself ! Once before I had 
failed her at need, I had not entered into 
her unselfish happiness as she had trusted 
that I should. I would not fail her now in 
her distress. 

From some undefined but very strong 
feeling I took her no flowers when Thursday 


came. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 197 

Did she notice ? Was she too busy with 
another thought ? 

Other people often sent her flowers, but 
on that day my heart smote me when I 
saw that there were none. Her new friend, 
whoever he might be, was neglectful of 
his privileges. 

“ Why did you ask me to play that 
Chopin on Sunday ? ” she said, when we 
had finished tea. “ I found it hard. You 
never gave me the name of any hero.” 

“ Why should you always play it for a 
hero of mine?” I said. “Have you none 
of your own ? ” 

“I have known very few soldiers in my 
life. The men whom I have known were 
mostly business men or scholars.” 

Here was the heroic death of the first 
admirer disposed of at a blow ! I felt oddly 
disappointed. Had he died as other men 
die? That was not right. 

“Every hero is not a soldier,” I said; 
but without conviction, for in my heart 
I rather thought he was. It was because 


198 


THE LADY ON THE 


I thought he was a soldier that I had 
tolerated the idea of the man at all. 

“ 0 dear no ! ” she rejoined, with more 
alacrity than was desirable. “ I have 
wondered sometimes why it was, that you 
gave only the names of soldiers.” 

“ Would you have liked to play for a 
Bishop ? ” 

I began to be afraid that her new friend 
was a heroic clergyman in the East End. 
That was why he sent her no flowers ; he 
was too poor — he had conscientious scruples 
about spending a penny. She had gone 
to the East End to hear him preach — and 
that was why she came in so late the other 
night. 

But her smile, at the thought of playing 
Chopin for a Bishop, dispelled my fears. 

“No,” she said. “I would play for a 
Missionary Bishop — they are heroes some- 
times, from what I hear. Or I would have 
played for Westcott. You have only to 
look at his face to see that he was a hero. 
Not for any other Bishops. I believe I 


DEAWINGROOM FLOOR 


199 


have more heroes than you. But you have 
not told me why it is that you always give 
your hero the name of a soldier.” 

“Because I knew one.” 

She sat silent in the old, understanding 
way. 

“It was a great thing for a lame dog 
like me,” I said. 

“ The greatest — for anyone,” she answered, 
low and reverently. 

“ Nothing else matters. In the end it 
is more real than anything.” 

“I wish I were sure of that,” she said, 
the poignant note of self-reproach in her 
voice again. “ One feels unworthy — un- 
worthy afterwards, to have known. It is 
as if things went wrong that never need 
have gone wrong, if one had thought before- 
hand. I cannot understand it at all. I 
cannot understand myself.” 

I was in the awkward position of a man 
who hears a secret without in the least 
comprehending it. When women talk about 
one, they drive their auditors to distraction. 


200 


THE LADY ON THE 


Lucilla — clear as light — Luoilla, who never 
got into difficulties because she always knew 
what she wanted — now spoke in riddles; she 
might, in fact, as well have played the piano 
so far as any definite impression, except that 
of sadness, was conveyed by her speech. 
Two people, who, as a rule, are independent 
of words, are in a bad way indeed when 
words become a necessity ; they have got 
out of the habit of asking questions. I asked 
myself questions without end : 

What had she done ? 

Why did she feel unworthy ? 

Why were things wrong that never need 
have gone wrong if one had known ? 

They were questions that I could not or 
would not ask her. 

Yet I felt rather happy, happier than I 
had felt for some time. I had steeled my- 
self to look upon her happiness. On the 
contrary, she was wretched ; and she had 
told me so. I had always rebelled against 
the maxim of La Eochefoucauld, that there 
is something not displeasing to us in the 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


201 


misfortunes of our best friends ; now, with 
an inward shiver at my own selfishness, I 
found it was true. I liked better that she 
should be miserable and tell me so, than that 
she should be happy and keep the reason 
to herself. What was become of all my fine 
resolutions ? 

I sat silent, hoping that she would speak 
further. 

“ We never ought to despise people, 
ought we ? ” 

Here at last the next move was an easy 
one. 

“Most certainly!” I replied. “Despise 
anybody who does not think as you do. It 
is the only weapon you have against him. 
He is not worth anger, and clearly he is not 
worth sorrow.” 

I was feeling, with scorn and self-contempt 
at the moment, how differently Lucilla would 
have acted, had I confided to her that I 
was troubled in mind. 

“I mean,” Lucilla said, humbly but not 
much as if she had been attending, “ there 


202 


THE LADY ON THE 


is a friend — no, not a friend — an acquaint- 
ance of mine, who lost her husband. She 
married again — and on her wedding day she 
laid a wreath on the grave of her first 
husband. I used to laugh at that.” 

Good heavens ! Had Lucilla been married 
before ? 

“ And now you wish to do the same ? ” 
I inquired. 

She laughed outright this time, and I was 
reassured in a moment. No widow ever 
laughed like that. 

“I ought not to be amused,” she said, as 
soon as she could speak. “ If I had married, 
I dare say I should have done just the same.” 

“ Perhaps you would. You remember the 
words of the French diviner, ‘ II ne faut 
jamais dire, Fontaine, je ne boirai jamais de 
ton eaa ' 

“ I do not think I am faithless,” she said, 
with a touch of something like defiance. 

“ I warn you that I do not care whether 
you are or not,” I replied, catching something 
of her tone. “ You recollect how Kitty said 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


203 


that Now was everything ? ” More and more 
I felt as if I could not trust myself to use my 
own words. “ It is. But — ” here I spoke out 
because I could not help it — “ I think you 
have some faith. I think you will not quite 
forget even so late a friend as I am, when 
the time comes for you to go away.” 

A look of utter amazement crossed her 
features. 

“ To go away ? ” she repeated. 

“ You are going, are you not ? ” 

I stopped breathing until I had her answer. 

“ Yes.” 

It seemed as hard as if I had never ex- 
pected it, never made up my mind to it, 
never known that it must be so. I felt as 
if she had taken a pistol, and fired it point 
blank into my breast. 

“How did you know? I have not told 
any one.” 

“You forget that I hear your thoughts.” 

“Not thoughts like that ! ” she said, as 
if bewildered. “ They don’t go deep enough.” 

It was foolish of me to have held my 


204 


THE LADY ON THE 


breath. Now, for some reason or other, 
I could not let it loose again. It only came 
in long gasps. I was gaping in an odd way. 
Everything in the room was first extremely 
clear and then invisible. Everything out of 
it was first acutely noisy, and then it turned 
into a sound like the waves of the sea. I 
stood up, meaning to move towards the 
door. But I had not gone one step when 
my conscious life ceased altogether. 

It came back with a stinging taste of 
sal volatile — a sense of shame at having 
fainted in somebody else’s room — a powerful 
disinclination to get up and see whose room 
it was. 

“ Lie still ! ” said Lucilla. 

Oh yes, I would ! I would lie still there for 
the rest of life, if I could look at her. It was 
not lying still that was difficult. Outside 
were the storms and the strangers. 

She smiled, held up her finger when I 
tried to speak, laid it on her lips, took a book 
from the table, and seated herself at the end 
of the sofa, where I could see her well. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


205 


It was very pleasant to lie and look at her. 

She had drawn a screen between me and 
the light so that it might not hurt my eyes. 
There was something restful in the fact that 
I saw only the grand outline of her figure, 
and not the details of her face. She seemed 
to be busy with that book, for she never once 
raised her eyes from it. But I did not want 
to talk, nor even to think, although my mind 
was clear. 

I was weak. Now that I come to think 
about it, I believe that I had not eaten much 
that day. I had been rather busier than 
usual, and had not recollected. Every ’bus 
was full when I started for home, and 
being too impatient to wait, I had taken the 
unusual course of walking. 

There came over me the gentle ecstasy 
of a mystic after a long fast, I had reached 
the end of all effort; there was nothing left 
for which to fight or to struggle. I lay still, 
as she bade me, and looked at her. 

I remembered a great many incidents of 
which I had not thought for years, and I 


206 


THE LADY ON THE 


remembered them in the right succession. 
Underneath it all ran the current that runs 
when we are dreaming — know that we are 
dreaming — are resolved not to awake. If I 
could only lie still there, could only go on 
dreaming, Lucilla would not drive me away. 
She would let me lie still there till I had 
done. So I began to exist over again. 

In some strange manner, without the 
slightest exertion of memory, — I cannot 
explain it — my past life seemed to have risen 
to the same level as the present — to be, as 
the objects are in a Japanese picture, on 
the same plane. It was as if I lived through 
all that was gone by once more, yet without 
losing consciousness of the actual moment, 
of Lucilla, seated there with her book. 

I cannot omit what happened, for it seemed 
as much a part of the continuity of life as 
if it had never happened before ; but I must 
fail to give the true impression, because I 
am compelled by the terms of language to 
relate it in the past tense. Eeally it all 
went on in the same room, at the same time. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


207 


XIII 


UCILLA’S room was yet Lucilla’s room, 



and still I was a lame man lying on 
a sofa ; she sat beside me still — I felt the 
comfort of her presence — and yet I was again 
a little child. 

It began with the sound of a voice singing 
“ Bonny Dundee.” 

I knew this by some inner sense more 
subtle than that of hearing — knew that it 
was my nurse who sang as she moved about, 
airing the linen before the nursery fire. 
How merrily it danced upon the bare, 
familiar walls ! Down below in the street 
the lamps were lighting. 

“ To the Lords of Convention ’twas Claver’se who spoke, 

‘ Ere the King’s crown shall fall there are crowns to be 
broke, 

So let each Cavalier who loves honour and me. 

Come follow the bonnet of Bonny Dundee ! ’ ” 


208 


THE LADY ON THE 


Into my nursery they rode, these jolly riders, 
out at the window, and I after them. I felt 
so very happy, so very safe ! How I galloped 
down “ the sanctified bends of the Bow ” and 
over the Causeway ! How I “ spurred to the 
foot of the proud Castle rock ! ” 

I was holding my breath when 

“ The Gordon demands of him which way he goes — 

‘Where’er shall direct me the shade of Montrose!’” 

On we went, on we went, flouting the 
Whig, racing over “ the hills beyond Pent- 
land and lands beyond Forth,” rousing “ the 
wild Duniewassals three thousand times 
three ! ” We were about to “ couch with 
the fox,” when there was an end of all this. 

A footstep on the stairs. 

The singing left off suddenly. 

The scene shifts. 

This time Lucilla’s room is the dining- 
room at the bottom of the tall house in 
Bayswater — a room to which I rarely go, 
because, unless I am sitting under the table, 
I do not feel safe there ; and I never feel 


DRAWINGEOOM FLOOR 


209 


happy. It is Friday afternoon, however, 
and on Fridays I am tempted down to see 
the man who — as my nurse says — “has the 
time,” and puts it into the great big clock 
in the corner. (I used to wish that he 
would take out some of the afternoon time, 
which was long and dull, and put in more 
of the evening, for that was short and full 
of romance and ended up too soon with bed.) 
We call him, between ourselves, Man Friday, 
for “ Robinson Crusoe ” is one of the few 
books in the nursery, and I like to play at 
being Robinson Crusoe. Man Friday is a 
kind, sociable, friendly fellow. He is 
laughing and showing me how the clock 
works when again that footstep is heard 
outside the door. He stops laughing at 
once, he does not even finish what he is 
telling me, but slinks away as if he had 
done something wrong. 

Again the scene shifts. 

This time it is the library that rises within 
Lucilla’s walls. 


15 


210 


THE LADY ON THE 


Into that room I never go, for there my 
father sits. But on that day I thought that 
he was out. The door was standing open, 
and I ventured in, lured by the bookshelves. 
Up in the nursery there were no books at 
all except the Bible, and “ Eobinson Crusoe,” 
and “ The Pilgrim’s Progress.” Here there 
were rows upon rows of books from floor to 
ceiling, books of all sizes and colours. I 
took out one, the nearest and the gayest, 
bound in scarlet, and opened straight on 
the stag-like eyes of my beloved Dundee, 
on the account of his death at Killiecrankie, 
slain by the silver bullet. Safe in my 
happiness, I had begun to read when I 
heard the footstep outside. I put the book 
back on the shelf, and slunk out of the 
room like Man Friday. 

It was like that always. 

Wherever my father came, there also came 
fear and silence. Wherever he came I shrank 
away from him. 

I was not fond of that solid square house. 


DRAWINGEOOM FLOOR 


211 


even as a child ; but then I was indifferent — 
its dreariness did not afflict me as in later 
years, and there were certain portions of it, 
certain oases in the desert that seemed to 
me to be inhabitable. One was the floor 
under the diningroom table — one the 
triangular space behind the grand piano in 
the drawingroom. From these coigns of 
vantage I would peep out upon my father. 
The rest belonged to him ; but these, like 
the nursery which he did not enter, belonged 
indisputably to me ; they were my home. 

There was always, even in these dim days, 
a consciousness that I wanted some one. 

When I was taken out to walk in the 
Square, when I heard the cries, the shrieks 
of laughter of the other children, as they 
raced and romped together, I thought it was 
another child that I wanted. I used to give 
them names of my own as I watched them 
shyly, longing that they would ask me to 
play with them. 

They never did. 

Sometimes, if they were not there (but 


212 


THE LADY ON THE 


they were almost always there) I could be 
very happy by myself. I remember making 
a nest of dried leaves once, and sitting in 
the midst of it, persuaded that I was a bird. 
But I could not play at that kind of thing 
if they were there. The shouts, the laughter, 
gave me the feeling of an exile upon a desert 
island. 

Often, of course, I played at Desert Islands. 
It is a very good game when you are all 
alone. 

But still I wanted some one, I always 
wanted some one. 

So, like a long, slow dream — not happy, 
not unhappy — childhood went by. 

As time passed on, a tutor was engaged 
for me, a good and conscientious man, who 
taught me a great deal more than he was 
paid to teach. 

I did not like him at first. I was very 
backward, never having learnt the lessons 
that other children learn as a matter of 
course. I was slow, as children are who 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


213 


live alone. I was not good at games. Out- 
wardly submissive, I rebelled in my heart 
against the drudgery alike of school work 
and of the solemn cricket, that my tutor 
wisely compelled me to play with him in 
the Square. It filled me with an inarticulate 
sense of outrage, to find that books — my one 
delight — were now a burden ; to have to 
waste precious hours (I had not known before 
how precious freedom was) adding up the 
bills, or measuring the walks, the drain-pipes, 
the wall-papers, of utterly uninteresting, im- 
personal people called A, B, and C. Claver- 
house and the Jacobites had not accustomed 
me to that kind of thing. 

Furthermore, my kind nurse was sent away. 
I was not told that she was going, until, in 
a burst of tears, she revealed the dreadful 
secret on the morning of her departure. I 
rushed downstairs to the library. Weeping, 
I besought my father that she might stay. 
He told me not to be a baby. She left the 
house that afternoon. 

When she was gone, however, I attached 


214 


THE LADY ON THE 


myself to my tutor. The first and the worst 
hours were over, and I began to like Latin 
and Greek, and, indeed, every other lesson 
that was not arithmetic. 

I owe it to him that I gained admission 
to the library. He promised my father that 
I would not hurt the books. 

Hitherto, ever since my unlucky intrusion, 
they had been forbidden fruit. I was not 
allowed to touch them. This prohibition 
added to — perhaps I should rather say it 
created — the interest that I felt. My eager 
eyes were familiar with half their titles long 
before my fingers grasped them. What 
wealth it seemed after those years of envious 
gazing through the half-open door ! 

Except for the moment during which I 
held “ Dundee ” in my hands, I do not think 
they had been touched since my grandfather’s 
time ; it was he who collected them, for he 
was a great lover of books. 

He was my mother’s father, and it seemed 
to me that, if he had been there, he would 
have liked me and I should have cared for 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


215 


him. I used to sit devouring those old books 
of his, what time my own father wrote his 
letters or studied the papers, with the curious 
concentration of the practical mind upon 
financial issues. 

The backs were variously bound, according 
to the subject. To this day I always think 
of Theology in inky black — of G-eography 
and books of travel in brown, the colour of 
the Earth — of History in purple like the robe 
of an Emperor — of Shakespeare and Milton 
(there were no other poets) in the hue of an 
evergreen. In all that great drab house there 
was only one patch of red — the shelf that held 
the Lives of Soldiers. 

These last awoke in me passionate admira- 
tion of the British Army. It was a grand 
collection of Memoirs; the old business man 
must have made it his chief recreation to 
read about the high-handed deeds of the 
Redcoats. Here and there a faint line of 
pencil in the margin attested his love of 
them. When I saw this line — when I felt 
my heart stirred as his had been at the 


216 


THE LADY ON THE 


sound of a trumpet, I met him — I knew, 
for all the intervening walls of space and 
time, that he was nearer to me than the 
figure in the armchair at the writing-table, 
adding and adding empty cyphers that stood 
for nothing but little bits of gold. 

These books did much to save me from 
the oppression of the house that was their 
prison as it was mine. The library was 
the only room that seemed to be alive. As 
I sat there and read, I recovered something 
of the old sense of freedom, of property 
of my own, that I had enjoyed when I lived 
under the piano or between the legs of the 
dining-room table. Yet even here the many- 
coloured bindings were so solid that I felt 
sometimes as though I could not get at 
the contents for the cover. Among a 
hundred, no handwriting adorned the fly- 
leaf of any one book. There was a plate, 
stuck correctly right in the middle of the 
first leaf of each, a dagger, and the words 
Once and for all. Not one had been a gift ; 
they were bought and paid for. Except 


DRAWINGEOOM FLOOR 


217 


the faint pencil line, no token existed of 
any human sympathy. These books of 
peril and adventure opened a new life for 
me, showed me there was a world else- 
where, They made of my existence a dif- 
ferent matter — but in one way they made it 
worse. 

The impersonal heaviness and stiffness 
of the place weighed on my spirits as if it 
were the perpetual assertion of a thing that 
I knew not to be true. The cliff-like mantel- 
pieces of dull, impenetrable marble — the 
tables, immovable as rock — the ponderous 
chairs that mocked each fugitive desire to 
change the look of even so much as a single 
corner of one of the symmetrical square 
gloomy rooms — these bits of wood and stone 
had no humanity, and they de-humanized 
those whose business it was to dust and 
polish them. The servants were stony 
persons that “ knew their place,” At stated 
times and seasons they appeared — did their 
work — vanished again. In between they 
were neither seen nor heard. For all their 


218 


THE LADY ON THE 


fear they had a certain esteem of my father, 
who possessed an irritable temper and would 
fly out at them on occasion in a manner 
to make anyone belonging to him red with 
shame. Me they did not like. I was 
always polite, more from dread of the loss 
of personal dignity and from a weak-kneed 
love of peace than from any higher motive. 
A feeble, timorous habit of this kind causes 
a gulf to open between people who live 
under the same roof. My father, in his 
outbursts of passion, leapt across, and those 
whom he flew upon did not resent his 
conduct : but I remained for ever upon the 
other side. 

My nurse had long ago gone back to 
Scotland, and no one sang now. Once, 
while I was still a child, I had found the 
key of the drawingroom piano in the lock. 

I had opened it. 

I had picked out the tune of “ Dundee.” 

Just as I was about to repeat this — to 
me — extremely beautiful performance, my 
father came in. 


DEAWINGEOOM ELOOE 


219 


“Father!” I said, “I want to learn to 
play.” 

The look of utter astonishment on my 
father’s face alarmed me even more than the 
frown that I had looked instinctively to 
see. 

“What for?” he said. 

I could not give a reason. 

I daresay Eubinstein, if he had been asked, 
at that age, why he wanted to learn to play, 
could not have given a reason either. 

In those days I still felt younger than my 
father ; but now that I had grown up, we 
presented an odd contrast. Spite of his 
iron-gray hair and the many lines on his 
narrow forehead, his was the youthfulness, 
the stir, the bustle, the excitement of life 
in a crowd, the eager interest in affairs of 
the day. I — a recluse by nature and never 
more of a recluse than during those first 
years of consciousness — lived like a student 
of sixty, absorbed in books, careful of my 
latter end, taking no risks because nothing 
tempted me to do so. 


220 


THE LADY ON THE 


Eeligion moved me secretly and strongly, 
but only after a personal manner, not with 
any view to public reform, to evangelization, 
to work amongst the poor. The simple 
lessons of my good nurse remained with 
me. The example of the good man who 
was my tutor bore fruit. I was no Gallio. 
I cared about these things. I read the 
inky volumes through and through. At that 
time I existed but to read — to study 
languages, for which I have always enter- 
tained a ridiculous affection, considering 
the difficulty that I find in expressing myself 
in my own — to dream — to brood upon the 
transitoriness of this world. The thought 
was a refuge to me when quite bowed down 
by the material force of it. I was little 
affected by the chance that I might yet 
remain in it forty or fifty years. I prepared 
for death in short, not for life. I could 
not face the immediate future. It meant 
that I should be condemned to enter the 
business, to adopt the kind of occupation 
that resulted in furniture and servants and 


DEAWINGROOM FLOOR 221 

a house and ways of going on like ours. I 
looked beyond. 

The earth was cold about me : but never 
having known the warmth of sympathy I 
was not conscious that I lacked it, and I 
supposed the deep dissatisfaction, the lone- 
liness that I experienced, the need of some 
one, to be the common lot of every man. 
Soldiers appeared to enjoy certain moments ; 
but all the writers of sermons assured me 
that life was a poor business, and I was quite 
disposed to believe them. I had hopes and 
aspirations that nothing outside me justified. 
I drew the conclusion that they pointed on, 
to another scene altogether. 


222 


THE LADY ON THE 


XIV 

A S I grew to manhood I became aware of 
a new atmosphere of consideration that 
surrounded me. 

It was because I was going to be — so 
every one said — very rich. 

My cousin was, apparently, the first to 
discover it. 

She was then a newly married woman. Just 
come to town, with a younger sister a marier. 
Casting about for an eligible partner, she 
decided on me. Her husband was a City 
magnate, and my father had been, for many 
years, well-known in the City. It was a 
shame, she declared, that a young man with 
prospects like mine should not be given every 
advantage. Neither my father nor my tutor 
had realized that I was grown up. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


223 


She spoke to me about it, and I felt 
grateful to her for her sympathy, and 
expressed perfect willingness to make the 
most of any and every advantage that she 
could prevail upon my father to afford me. 
I might not have been as wax in her hands 
if I had gauged her power or suspected her 
motive ; for though I liked her well, I had no 
desire to become her brother-in-law. Secretly, 
I entertained little hope of her success. 

The right expression in the mouth of the 
right person goes a long way, however. She 
did it all with two words — very rich. 

Because I was going to be very rich, she 
spoke to my tutor, she compelled him to 
think it was his duty to take steps in the 
matter. She left him no rest until he made 
urgent representations to my father, to 
the effect that I ought to be allowed to 
complete my education by attending lectures 
at University College. 

“ A man who has not been at one of the 
Universities is nowhere,” she said. “ Your 
father will have nothing to say to Oxford 


224 


THE LADY ON THE 


or Cambridge. Very well. University Col- 
lege sounds like a University ! University 
College is the next best thing.” 

It was because I was going to be very rich 
that she persuaded my father to have me 
taught riding and dancing, “exercises” which 
as she said, “ befitted my station.” 

I was nothing loth. At University College 
I did well ; I loved the place where people 
could be found who cared for books; and 
active exercise was of great benefit to my 
health, which had began to fiag in the close 
air of the library. At her instigation and 
with her approval also, I became a volunteer. 

“ It makes a man hold himself straight like 
nothing else,” she said. 

Sacred enthusiasm filled my heart when, in 
the company of two other youthful patriots, on 
a wet, muddy afternoon, attired in stiff, uncom- 
fortable uniform, the buttons of which were 
always coming off, I heard the raucous voice 
of the drill sergeant exclaim, “ Fifty-fifth 
Middlesex, prepare to receive cavalry ! ” 

A little later, when my cousin had had 


DEAWINGKOOM FLOOR 


225 


time to make her own way in society, and 
to assure herself that her pains were not 
entirely wasted on me, it was because I was 
going to be very rich that numerous in- 
vitations to the houses of people, who were 
all very rich themselves, began to pour in 
on me. Every one of these I declined by 
return of post, feeling very proud and grand 
as I did so. These were the children whom 
I had wanted so much long ago. They would 
not play with me then ; now they wanted to 
play with me. No ! It was too late ! I had 
learned to do without them. I had “ put 
away childish things.” I preferred books, — 
books, and the prospect of Eternity. 

I laugh now as I think of the airs that 
I gave myself, but then I felt extremely 
contemptuous. Had they no idea, these 
people, of the extreme stupidity of being 
very rich? If I had the misfortune to be- 
come very rich — I did not think it possible, 
I might have expected the fall of a pyramid 
sooner than the death of any one so much 
more solidly built than myself as my father — 
16 


226 


THE LADY ON THE 


I had made up my mind what to do. I would 
give away everything except the few hundred 
pounds that would save me from dependence 
in case of accident. I did not want to part 
with my substance from generosity, but be- 
cause I hated to be responsible and disliked 
the close attention that money requires. I did 
not know at the time, that very little requires 
even closer attention than very much. I was 
a prudent young man. I had a horror of 
becoming even more dull than I was, but a 
still greater horror of existing on benefits. 
It is the curse of families who have lived 
by careful thrift for two or three generations, 
that their young people are born old. My 
admiration of the life of daring and adventure 
was keen as ever. I could not see a regiment 
pass down the street but I longed to run away, 
to take the Queen’s shilling, to trudge along 
the road beside those fine fellows who were 
all for death and glory. But in my heart 
I knew that life was not for me. 

God gave me all of it that could be mine 
in a friend. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


227 


Lucilla, of him I cannot speak ! He only, 
of all those called by remembrance to your 
little room, was not there. He only, when 
— on the sudden failure of that life which 
had been granted me for the last few years — 
I questioned all the rest for its meaning, I 
lived it through again to cry : — WJiai was 
the meaning^ if not this friendship with 
you ? — he only was not there. 

I met him first about the time of which I 
have been speaking. He was but an ac- 
quaintance then. Conscious that he had 
everything — I nothing — to offer, I shrank 
from forcing myself upon him. 

It was not till afterwards that I became 
his friend, but he was mine from the first. 

Even apart from this, I was beginning to 
feel keener interest in life. Certain powers 
of imagination awoke, and fed by the sweet 
air of encouragement and approval at College, 
they grew like the gourd that sprang up 
in a night. 

Once more the Jacobite gentry came to 
my aid. The College authorities proposed 


228 


THE LADY ON THE 


an essay on the great Scotch leaders in the 
cause of the Stuarts. 

I dreamed of it by day and thought of it 
by night. I devoted every spare moment to 
the study of the scarlet shelf in the library. 
I became as Stevenson says, “ a great friend 
to paper-makers.” Many waste-paper baskets 
stand behind the scenes of even the very 
slightest success in letters. I fulfilled this 
primary condition ; waste-paper basket after 
waste-paper basket I filled; and in the end 
my essay was the best. I cannot say that 
I felt surprised. I had known that it must 
be. The other students were writing as a 
task. I was writing to prove there was 
something in me beyond the power of 
addition and subtraction. I was writing to 
justify myself in an attempt to escape from 
everything that made life not w'orth living. 
I was writing for love of the heroes of 
childhood. It was a more vital affair to me 
than it was to the others. I was not 
surprised itherefore, but I was much elated. 

It was my twenty-first birthday. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


229 


I read my name at the top of the Class 
List, and then I walked home through the 
busy streets, eager, happy, my heart full 
of humility and thanksgiving. 

I would go, flushed with success, to my 
father. He would see that there was some- 
thing in me, that I was not fit for office work, 
that he must set me free to follow my own 
bent. I remember how brightly the lamps 
were shining on that winter night, with what 
a friendly air the stars looked down. 

At home I found my cousin in the library. 
She had looked in to remonstrate with me 
about an invitation to a dance, which I had 
just declined. I took her hand and told her 
of my good luck. 

“ I am so glad, Oliver,” she said blandly. 
“About the Jacobites? Oh yes, delightful! 
I never thought Cromwell was a gentleman. 
What’s that ? Your father coming in ? ” 

It was the footstep in the hall. For the 
first time — so happy and safe I was, — my 
heart did not sink as I heard it. 

“Father I ” I said, going up to him as he 


230 


THE LADY ON THE 


entered. “ I’ve come out first at College for 
an essay on the Jacobites.” 

And suddenly the words froze on my lips 
just as they had frozen long ago when J. 
asked to learn music, at the look of gray 
bewilderment on his face. 

“ Indeed,” he said. “ That shows it is 
waste of time and money to keep you there.” 

I was taken away from College at the end 
of the term and set to work as a clerk. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


231 


XV 

“ J^EAVING a perpetual remembrance, thou 
art gone; in thy death thou wert even 
such as in thy life : wealth to the poor, hope 
to the desponding, support to the weak. Thou 
couldst meet desperate troubles with a spirit 
that knew not despair, and breathe might into 
the trembling. 

“ The Lord of China oives thee thanks for 
thy benefits ; the throne of his ancient kingdom 
hath not been cast down. 

^'■^And where the Nile unites the divided 
strength of his streams, a city saw thee long- 
suffering. A multitude dwelt therein, but 
thine alone was the valour that guarded it 
through all that year, when by day and by 
night thou didst keep watch against the host of 


232 


THE LADY ON THE 


the Arabians, who went around it to devour it, 
with spears thirsting for blood. 

“ Thy death was not wrought by the God of 
War, but by the frailties of thy friends. For 
thy country and for all men God blessed the 
worh of thy hand. Hail, stainless warrior ! 
Hail, thrice victorious hero ! Thou livest, and 
shalt teach aftertimes to reverence the counsel 
of the Everlasting Father." 

So things went on until the year of the 
War in the Soudan. 

Crushed, weary, overworked, ill, sick at 
heart because of ceaseless drudgery, my tran- 
sitory interest in the life of this world was 
fading out by that time. The overwhelming 
interest of another grew every day more strong. 

It is the tendency of each one of us to 
think himself alone and singular in suffering. 
Doubtless there was many another in my case. 
I suppose there are living now thousands of 
middle-aged men and women who remember 
what that year was to them. I suppose there 
stands on many a shelf a little black Thomas 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 233 

h Kempis with a date scrawled at the begin- 
ning, a resolution to read it in memory of that 
strange warrior who found his tactics in its 
pages. 

At last there stood on earth a man whom 
saints disputed for with heroes. The reign of 
Heaven on earth was, in one man, begun. 

He had been offered the contents of a room 
packed from floor to ceiling with gold, and 
had refused it as if it were dross. 

I heard all the people who were very rich 
saying how wonderful this was. I felt glad 
that he had done it, of course, but to me that 
was his least title to honour. 

He had put by the crown of Fame as if it 
were made of paper. There I bent my knee 
to him. 

He fought for nothing in Time, but for the 
Lord. Had he been cruel as Dundee, cold as 
Wellington, I had adored him ; but he was on 
fire with mercy and pity. 

When Charles George Gordon went to 
Khartoum, he carried me with him. I fol- 
lowed his course from day to day. I saw the 


234 


THE LADY ON -THE 


dusty figure on the tall camel, jogging through 
the desert. I saw the Bible and the gleam- 
ing sword. I saw the entrance into the city — 
the stern blue eyes, bright when they rested 
on a child. I stood in the crowded market, 
to watch the posting of the proclamation. I 
heard the cheers, the murmurs, the tales told 
there of wise and happy ruling in the past — 
of his ride, unprotected, into the midst of the 
enemy’s camp, to bring back peace. 

When Gordon asked for the great Slave- 
driver, my brain reeled with astonishment for 
a moment; I had enough of the theologian 
in me for that, but I did not waver. If he 
wanted Zebehr, if he wanted the tyrant he 
had done his utmost to destroy, if he wanted 
the Devil for that matter, the Devil was the 
person to go. I lived in white and silent rage 
for days after Zebehr was refused. I had 
thought that I was a Liberal : Gladstone fell 
from his place in my esteem like a stone. 

After that, I beheld, my own heart tighten- 
ing, the lines drawn close and closer — the 
digging of the trenches — the entanglements of 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


235 


barbed wire — the arming of the steamers — the 
cannon on the roof of the Palace — the defence 
growing every day bolder and more imagina- 
tive as Hope, by inches, died. Still, Hope 
was absolute in me, I did not admit the 
possibility of defeat ; but I could not sleep. 

The night to which I now go back in 
thought — the night on which the kindled 
torches of grief and joy flashed on the dead- 
ness of my mortal nature, and kindled that 
also into life, is the night on which London 
learnt the Fall of Khartoum. 

In stupefled rebellion, in a dim wild agony of 
revolt I sat, my eyes glued to the paper. 

I doubted the existence of God. 

“ Ah well ! ” my father had said when I 
came in, speechless, and pointed to the news. 
“ Gordon was mad, of course.” 

In thought I, at that moment, became a 
murderer. I would have killed my father if I 
could. 

I do not know how long I had sat in an 
intensity of passion that crowded years into 
hours when the door opened. 


236 


THE LADY ON THE 


Something was said that I did not hear nor 
heed ; and two ladies entered. 

“ May I ask the favour of a few minutes in 
private with you ? ” the elder of the two 
inquired. 

If it had not been for the utter bewilder- 
ment of my senses, I should have noticed 
my father’s unusual politeness. Few visitors 
came to our house, and when they did they 
received little encouragement. He begged 
the younger lady to be seated, and left the 
room with her companion. I remained dully 
sitting where I was. I had not even the good 
manners to rise. I suppose she saw the paper 
in my hand. 

“Is there any news to-night?” she said, 
turning to me as soon as the door had 
closed. 

I had almost said No : but first I looked at 
her, as she sat by my father’s writing-table. 
The tall lamp stood behind her, and she was 
wearing a dark hat so that I scarcely saw her 
face at all, only two great dark eyes looking 
straight into mine. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


237 


“ Yes ! ” I said, slowly. “ Khartoum has 
fallen.” 

It was a curious relief to my heart to say 
the words. Madness passed from it as I 
spoke. 

She clutched her hands together. 

“ Gordon ? ” she said in a kind of cry. 

“ Gordon is dead.” 

The light of the stars went out. She hid 
her face, I saw her whole frame shaken with 
weeping. By her weeping she saved two 
worlds for me ; and yet I could not endure to 
see it. 

“Listen! ” I said fiercely. “ There is God.” 

She did not speak. She could not ; but she 
held out her hand. . . . 

Voices out in the hall ; and my one thought, 
to screen her ! 

I came forward, spoke rapidly to my father 
to distract his attention. What nonsense I 
repeated, I do not know. 

They stayed only a few minutes longer. 
There was one more word for me. The elder 
lady passed out first, and, as my father busied 


238 


THE LADY ON THE 


himself helping her on with her mantle, I 
touched the girl on the shoulder. 

“ We cannot meet here ! Will you wait for 
me ? Will you write ? ” I whispered low in 
her ear. 

Once more the stars shone. 

“I will wait,” she said. “Yes, I will 
write.” 

She touched my hand — turned — hurried 
from me. 

She was going out at the door, and the door 
was the door of Lucilla’s room and yet the 
door of the library in the old house at Bays- 
water, when Lucilla raised her eyes from the 
book and looked at me. 

“ Do you remember what day this is ? ” she 
asked. 

I shook my head. Yet her question fitted 
my thoughts in some way. There was no 
interruption. 

“ It is the 26th of January,” she said, “ the 
day of the Fall of Khartoum.” 

I signed to her that I wanted music, and 
she went to the piano and began to play. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


239 


She could not see me as she sat ; and before 
the sweet notes ceased I rose from my couch 
and stole away. 

There was more remembering for me yet, 
but not of that which, in the room with her, I 
dared to recollect. 


240 


THE LADY ON THE 


XVI 

QCAKCELY upon the night of its occur- 
^ rence, on the first 26th of January, had 
that scene in the library appeared more real 
than it was to me, though I had not sus- 
pected the anniversary as I lay on the sofa in 
Lucilla’s room. 

I was shaking with fright as I hobbled 
downstairs again. 

I felt myself still too weak to be in the 
clutches of Memory, when Memory was not 
the sweet-scented dead-roseleaf affair that she 
is at most times, but rather the vulture of 
Prometheus. I shuddered at the thought 
of going through again anything like the 
tortures of longing — of the doing to death 
of hope slowly, little by little — that brought 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


241 


me, in the months which followed that night, 
to the edge of despair. 

Whether I was too much exhausted in body 
for my mind to work any more — whether 
Lucilla had played the vulture to sleep — I 
know not ; but certain it is that I went to rest 
and rested, and that I rose up next morning, 
refreshed and strong. 

Mahry brought me down a note with an 
inquiry as to how I had passed the night, and 
a friendly invitation to come upstairs to tea 
again that very afternoon, if I felt able. I 
added it to the collection that I already 
possessed, with a sigh. I smiled to myself 
a little sadly as I wrote the only possible 
answer. Women are always so anxious that 
two and two should not make four. 

When she had satisfied herself that the 
music of the night before had charmed 
away my weakness — when she had professed 
her eager willingness to play to me again 
whatever I preferred to hear, 

“Lucilla,” I said, “do you never play 
for a dead woman ? ” 


17 


242 


THE LADY ON THE 


“ Do you wish me to play for one ? ” 
she inquired, an unusual expression on her 
face. I could not, for the life of me, tell 
whether she wanted the answer to be Yes 
or No. 

“Yes,” I said, “I should like you to 
play for a girl who died long ago.” 

“ Are you sure she is dead? ” said Lucilla, 
turning round abruptly. She spoke for once 
just as most people speak, and I felt annoyed. 

“ She is dead to me.” 

“ I will not play for her,” said Lucilla, 
“I do not believe she is dead at all. You 
cared for her. You care for her still.” 

“ Yes,” I said, “ I care for her so much 
that, from the day I saw her, I have never 
spoken of her till now. I shall always care 
for her. She saved my life once.” 

For the first time when I spoke of a 
matter that seriously interested me, Lucilla 
showed no interest whatever. 

She kept silence. 

“I know nothing about your life,” she 
observed, rather wilfully. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


243 


“ There is little enough to know.” 

I suppose I glanced down at my lame 
leg, for she said, with more tenderness, 

“ You were not lame always. What was 
it that made you lame ? ” 

“ Admiration of a hero ; and one of those 
results of fixed laws which we call acci- 
dent.” 

“ Never mind the fixed laws ! Tell me 
about the hero and the accident.” 

“ You can imagine who the hero was,” 
I said, glancing at the statuette on the 
mantelpiece. 

“Gordon?” 

“ It was at the Service in memory of 
him — outside the Abbey. A rough knocked 
down a woman in the crowd. I fought him. 
You cannot think what fun it was, at such 
close quarters. Don’t be admiring, please ! 
I should never have done it, if I had known 
what the result would be. And the woman 
was drunk. I daresay the rough turned 
out, after all, the better specimen of the two. 
It only lasted a minute. The ground was 


244 THE LADY ON THE 

slippery, I fell against a lamp post, and 
the bone of my leg snapped.” 

“ She came and nursed you, I suppose ? ” 
asked Lucilla, still as if she were inquiring 
into the character of a dressmaker who had 
cheated her, 

“ If she had done that, I might perhaps 
have walked again like any one else.” 

“ How long is it since you saw her last ? ” 

“ Nineteen years to a day.” 

The statement affected her in some way, 
for her manner changed. She left the piano, 
and came over to her usual seat beside the 
fire, 

“That’s a very long time ago.” 

“ It did not seem long to me last night.” 

“ You saw her very often ? ” 

“ Once only.” 

“ Why only once ? ” she cried, fire kindling 
in her dark eyes. 

I hesitated. 

Unwittingly, she who so seldom asked 
questions had asked me one, the answer 
to which involved such pain in the rousing 


DEAWINGKOOM FLOOE 


245 


of old sorrow, that I could not choose but 
hesitate. 

“You need not tell me unless you like,” 
she said. “ I’m sure I do not want to know.” 

I wished Lucilla would leave off being 
like other people. It suited her ill. 

I tried speaking the truth. If the refuge 
of silence were interdicted, the plain, dull, 
naked truth was my only resource. “ Some- 
thing happened which made it impossible for 
me to think of marriage,” I said stupidly. 

“ The accident ? You could not believe 
that she would mind that ? ” Lucilla said, 
with a thin tremble in her voice. “ If she 
had anything at all in her, she would have 
cared for you the more because you were 
lame. She could have done things for you : 
it Vould have made her happier.” 

“ Would it really have added so much to 
her happiness ? ” I said, smiling. “ Perhaps 
it would. I have been told that women are 
like that — some women. I never had the 
chance of testing it. The accident happened 
too long after.” 


•246 


THE LADY ON THE 


“ After what ? ” 

“Must I tell you?” 

“ Good gracious ! ” Luoilla said, and she 
was cold and sharp as steel again. “ You 
speak as if you had committed a crime.” 

“ My father did commit a crime.” 

She started so violently that a pang shot 
through me. Was I about to risk her friend- 
ship by telling her of my father’s disgrace ? 
Surely it could not be. That was not like 
Lucilla. But it made me resolve to tell 
her at once. 

“ My father committed forgery,” I said. 

“She gave you up because of that?” 
Lucilla asked. 

Once more I felt relieved. Lucilla did 
not intend to give me up because of that — 
so much was clear. She spoke as if it were 
the merest trifle. 

“ I did what any man would have done 
under the circumstances. My name was 
dishonoured ; I had not a penny left. I 
made no attempt to see her again.” 

“ And your father ? ” 


DEAWINGROOM FLOOR 


247 


“ I could do nothing for him. He had 
run away from it all.” 

“ Do not speak — if you cannot,” she said 
again, in her own voice. 

“ I would rather tell you now that I have 
begun. It was on the morning after the 
Fall of Khartoum. My father was found 
dead in his chair. He had learnt, the night 
before, that exposure was inevitable.” 

“You had money of your own, money 
that was yours by right, through your 
mother — you gave it up to save his credit, 
left yourself penniless ? ” 

“ You knew, all the time ? ” 

“I only guessed. I heard a story some- 
thing like it, a long while ago. Besides, 
I always thought you must be living 
here, somehow or other, by your own 
choice.” 

“ I had no choice in the matter. Would 
you have felt that you had any ? ” 

“ No,” said Lucilla reluctantly, after a 
long pause. 

She is given to admire in others actions 


248 


THE LADY ON THE 


that she herself would perform as a matter 
of course. I experienced a momentary 
triumph at having brought her to bay. 

“'Now you?” I said, “you really chose 
to come to this house. You need not have 
done so ? ” 

She smiled — a smile with depths in it, 
like the smile of Mona Lisa. 

“I had to come.” 

“ Why ? ” 

“ The money that my aunt left me had 
cost life. I could not have borne to touch 
it. I gave it to a Hospital, that it might 
bring back life again. I had a little of my 
own; and I made more by teaching, and 
reading aloud, and painting. So things were 
never very difficult.” 

“ It does not matter much where you live. 
You would make it home always.” 

“ I think I could — if I were free. Freedom 
is the one thing that matters. After the 
first — of course that was terrible — I daresay 
you were glad to be free from all the heavy 
responsibilities, from the enormous gloomy 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


249 


house that very rich London people always 
live in ? ” 

She spoke as if she had seen it. 

“I should have been glad, only then, 
you see, I fell lame.” 

“ 0,” she said, looking ready to cry. “ I 
forgot that.” 

“ Do not mind ! It was then that I found 
a friend. When he saw me tumble down, 
he picked me up. Every day while I lay 
ill he came to see me, and cared for me 
as tenderly as any woman. I had thought 
that I could not bear to be at once poor 
and dependent. He never let me feel that 
I was.” 

“ And does he never come to see you 
now ? ” 

I did not answer. 

“ I see,” she said softly. “ He too is 
among the dead.” 

“ He died at the Atbara.” 

She honoured silently with me all those 
who had fallen. I wonder if there is any 
monument that a man need covet so greatly 


250 


THE LADY ON THE 


as the pause that follows after his name if 
he has died well. 

“ And what became of you ? How did 
you live ? ” 

“ After he went away to Egypt ? I hardly 
recollect. I was condemned by a Doctor to 
live abroad for two or three winters. If you 
know the way to do it, you can starve in a 
Swiss pension without much personal discom- 
fort. In fact it quite restored my health. I 
scribbled for the Press — I translated books 
that nobody cared to read — when I came 
home I looked up authorities in the British 
Museum — I read and copied manuscripts. 
At last an old uncle died, and left me enough 
to enter a solicitor’s ofiice. I live very well 
now, and have more than enough.” 

“ You have been cruel to her, I think,” 
Lucilla said slowly. 

“ Cruel to her ? ” 

“ Yes ; you asked her to wait. How could 
she tell why it was that you never came near 
her ? ” 

“ She must have known what happened. 
It was in all the papers.” 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


251 


“ She wrote to you.” 

“ Not a word.” 

“ I am quite sure she wrote to you.” 

I began to feel annoyed with Lueilla again. 
What business had she to be so certain 
when she knew nothing about the matter ? 

“ She never wrote,” I said. “Why should 
she have written ? ” 

A thousand times in the year of my 
misery I had asked myself this question, as I 
sat waiting, waiting, in the great bare library 
from which my well loved books were gone, 
and all day long, and half the night, post 
after post came in without the letter that it 
should have brought. I had answered myself 
so many times, “ There is no reason why 
she should,” that at last I believed it. 
Now, nineteen years after, came Lueilla, to 
make me doubt again ! 

“Why should she have written?” I re- 
peated. 

“ She was bound to write. Besides, she 
could not have helped it.” 

I sat silent. 


252 


THE LADY ON THE 


Her voice expressed something that had 
spoken long ago in my own heart. 

“Well,” I said, with deliberation, “at any 
rate I know more of her than you do. The 
fact remains, that she did not write. I dare- 
say she married someone else after a year or 
two. She is, you may be sure, a happy wife 
and mother. And now you understand 
perhaps why I said she was dead to me.” 

“ But I hnow fehe wrote,” said Lucilla. 
“ The letter was lost — that’s why you never 
heard. The house must have been all in 
confusion after a dreadful thing like that. 
The servants mislaid it.” 

I shook my head. The servants never 
mislaid anything in our house. 

Lucilla’s eyes, when she turned and looked 
at me, were soft with tears. I had not seen 
such a thing before. It distressed, and at the 
same time it pleased me. 

“ Dear friend,” I said, “ do not trouble 
yourself. It is better as it is. I should have 
hated to drag her down — and then my lame- 
ness ! ” 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


253 


“ I cannot bear it,” said Luoilla. “ All 
these years she might have been helping 
you.” 

“ The memory of her has helped me always 
— when things were at the worst.” 

“ You must find her,” Luoilla said. “You 
will find her still.” 

I rose, bade her good-night, and went 
downstairs to my room. 

I was miserably agitated. When first we 
stir with words dark depths of consciousness 
that have lain silent for many years, we 
hardly know what it is that comes to the 
surface. 


254 


THE LADY ON THE 


XVII 


OMEN are terribly practical. My 



’ ’ friendship with Luoilla had taught me 
that much. I began to regret what I had 
done. I feared to see her again lest she 
should say, that I must, without delay, set 
forth on a pilgrimage in quest of a lady, 
whom, after the lapse of nineteen years, it 
was more than probable that I should not 
even recognise if I saw her. 

Lucilla said nothing of the kind, however. 

She was too wise to fall into the error of 
many sympathetic women who go on express- 
ing their sympathy, time after time, until 
the exhausted receiver grows weary. She 
made no allusion to what had passed. She 
talked of this and that — our tiny household 
politics — my cousin, Mrs. Hopgood, and her 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


255 


anxiety about Frida, who had just begun to 
assert herself, and wanted go to the Eoyal 
College of Music, like Kitty — the last news 
from Australia. 

“ Kitty is happier than ever.” 

She lingered lovingly over the words, but 
she did not offer to read me the letter that 
had come for her by the last mail. 

Great as my relief was, I felt surprised. 
Is it so easy to be back on the old terms ? 
What had happened to restore her serenity 
since the day when she announced that she 
had not been faithful ? Quickly and mys- 
teriously as she had gone away, she had come 
back again ; but why ? 

My eyes fell by chance on the old mirror, 
on the words engraved beneath, “ Hier c'est 
demain.” Whoever wrote them knew a 
woman like this, one who kept faith. There 
might be hours of night between, but yester- 
day would be to-morrow ; after all, why 
matters very little. 

I had not then committed an indiscretion 
in telling her so much. I was not to be made 


256 


THE LADY ON THE 


to pay for it. Our gentle, familiar intimacy 
would go on as before, untroubled by her 
deeper knowledge. The hidden life, which 
I had dragged forward with such pain, sank 
back into the depths. Every trifling common- 
place act, every single word reassured me. 
She would never make me repent of my con- 
fidence. It was all well. Nay, it was better 
than before, because she knew. 

“ By the way,” she said, when I rose to 
bid her good-night, “ where is the book that 
you promised to lend me ? You promised it, 
three weeks ago.” 

Three weeks ago ! How could I be expected 
to know what I had promised in those pre- 
historic ages ? 

“ What was it ? I am afraid I have for- 
gotten.” 

“It was a Life of Somebody, by Some- 
body,” Lucilia said, slightly frowning. “ You 
must remember ; you said every one ought to 
read it. I daresay I shall not get through. 
I do not care for Lives, as a rule.” 

“ You lose much,” I observed, not un- 


DRAWINGEOOM FLOOR 


257 


willing to prolong my stay by a friendly 
argument. We held very different notions 
concerning books. 

She took the ball, but rather as one who 
did not want the game to stop, than as one 
who cared greatly about winning. 

“ What do I lose, except a little trumpery 
gossip ? If I want to know what men have 
done, I read history. If I want to know what 
they ought to have done, I read romance.” 

Lucilla’s attitude in this matter was not 
unknown to me, and I regretted it. I thought 
she deprived herself (and me) of much inno- 
cent pleasure, through her scorn of biography. 
In her eyes, as in those of many women, 
it was but so much raw material, out of 
which, given the proper craftsman, a good 
novel might be constructed. In person I find 
it, as a rule, easier to read a bad Life than a 
good Novel, so weak is my imagination, so 
strong my interest in my fellow-creatures. 
And as she could not read Lives, and I could 
not read Novels, we both read much that it 
was impossible for us to discuss. 

18 


258 


THE LADY ON THE 


Lucilla, of course, read, more for what books 
suggested than for what they could tell her. 
She read so much of herself into them, that 
I had been woefully disappointed sometimes 
when I essayed to follow in her steps. 

She would tell me a glowing tale, full of 
mysterious perils, of wit, of courage, of 
characters original as those of Fancy out for 
a holiday. 

Enchanted with the brilliancy of her 
description, I would take the rash step of 
going to the Library in search of this treasure 
of a novel, believing that now at last the 
longed for successor of E. L. Stevenson was 
really come. I got it easily enough. I carried 
it home, full of triumph. In the chill solitude 
of my den I sat down to peruse it. Alas, 
what was gold to her was only dead leaves 
to me ! Where she saw all the myriad forms 
of life, I saw nothing but flat incompetence. 

She had that singleness of aim which is 
peculiar to feminine readers. If the book fired 
her imagination, that was all she demanded. 
The author might violate nature and truth 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


259 


at every turn, and she cared nothing. She 
had a magnificent disregard of style — even 
of grammar — in the interests of “ the story.” 
Nothing annoyed her more than what she was 
pleased to call “correcting the press.” She 
had not the remotest feeling for that fine age 
of accuracy when scholars took each other’s 
lives, because they held divergent views as to 
the position of a comma. 

The real reason of her neglect of biography 
was, perhaps, that it told her too much, that 
it hemmed her in with facts when fancy 
was all that she wanted. She liked to dress 
the doll herself, not to have it dressed for 
her. 

“ One good character in a Novel is worth 
fifty Lives,” she observed carelessly, as I sat 
silent, pondering on this idiosyncrasy of her 
disposition. 

“ Not always ! Dr. Johnson is much better 
fun in Boswell than he is in ‘ The Virginians ’.” 

“ Boswell’s Life of Johnson ! That was it,” 
she exclaimed. “ You said everybody ought 
to read that.” 


260 


THE LADY ON THE 


“ A general proposition that there is no 
disputing ! ” 

“Will you lend it to me now ? ” 

“ Gladly. Mine is an old edition in ten 
volumes.” 

Lucilla’s face fell. 

“ Have you read them all ? ” 

“ I have read the first nine till I know them 
almost by heart; but I have never gone 
further than the middle of the tenth.” 

“ Then, the next time you come,” said 
Lucilla, (“mind, I am in no hurry for it!) 
bring me the tenth volume. The tenth 
volume of Boswell's Life of Johnson. I will 
begin where you left off. If I can read the 
tenth, then I will read all the rest.” 

A most fantastic reason ; but I knew her 
too well to attempt remonstrance. I bowed 
to her decision, and went downstairs. 

It occurred to me to wonder a little, that 
she should have asked so urgently for a book, 
whose very title she had forgotten. 

In the beginning of our acquaintance, when 
I often recommended volumes that, later on. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


261 


I knew she never could have cared to read, 
I noticed that she graciously let their names 
drop. She had not time just then — she was 
busy with something else. She never wounded 
me, but she held her own, and by degrees 
I came to understand that her reading was 
as free as every other action of hers, and that 
no one influenced, or ever could aspire to 
influence her choice. 

Why was she going to read Boswell ? 

For the first time I doubted Bozzy. I felt 
myself uncertain of his power to amuse. 

She was going to read him to please me — 
that we might have some recognized subject 
to talk about. She was going to read Dr. 
Johnson’s Life in order that I might not be 
afraid that she meant to speak again of my 
own. 

A week later I dug out volume ten from 
his fellows, and carried it up to her. I wished 
that she had not desired to see that volume. 
As I touched the cover, a host of painful and 
bitter thoughts rushed back upon me. 

“It is very dusty,” she said, with dis- 


•262 


THE LADY ON THE 


approval. “ I can see that you have not read 
it for a long time.” 

“ No,” I said, “ I do not recollect a word.” 

“ And yet you know the others by heart ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Why did you treat this one so badly ? 
Did you not care about the end ? ” 

“ Too many other things came to an end 
for me when I was reading that.” 

“ Ah, forgive me ! ” she cried quickly, “ you 
were reading it when — when your father 
died?” 

I stood as in a dream. The whole day 
came back to me. 

“ Yes,” I said. “ It was the 27th of 
January, 1885, the day after the Fall of 
Khartoum, — the day after that night. They 
came and told me about my father. I went 
to see. There were hours, long hours — it was 
the only time when they left me alone. They 
pulled the blinds down. It was quiet and 
dark. No one knew yet. I thought about 
the night before. I felt as if it must have 
been I, I myself, that had killed my father. 


DEAWINGKOOM FLOOE 


263 


The book was lying on the table, where 
I had laid it down the night before, when I 
went out to buy that paper. I read and read 
as if I were taking opium ; I read till I could 
scarcely see. It grew dark then, quite dark. 
Some one came in with an ugly, absurd, long 
face to say, ‘ Would I come and give directions 
about the coffin ? ’ I put a mark in the book, 
I remember, because it gave me a minute’s 
respite. I know I meant to come back to it. 
Somehow I never could.” 

“ Of course you could not.” 

She was sitting by the fire, and I heard 
her sigh gently as she turned over the dusty 
leaves. 

All at once she drew a quick, sharp breath. 

I looked up. 

“Nothing!” she said, in the voice of one 
repressing some strong excitement. “I 
happened to open the book just where you 
must have stopped reading. Look 1 Here is 
the mark I You must have thrust it in — for- 
gotten it. You never broke the seal. Look 1 ” 

There between the pages, the ink dry and 


264 


THE LADY ON THE 


faded, lay an old letter. The writing bore 
an odd likeness to her own, I noticed that 
at once, but the hand was very young and 
unformed. 

“ Her letter — her letter to you ! ” Lucilla 
said. “ I told you that she wrote.” 

As in a dream I took the letter from her 
and sat silent, gazing at that old Bayswater 
address. 

“Open it!” she said imperiously. “It 
deserves to be read now, any way.” 

I obeyed. 

She seemed to know by intuition when I 
had done. 

“Well?” 

Her eyes were fixed on me with a look 
between triumph and suspense. 

“ Yes,” I said, “ you are right. If I had 
read this nineteen years ago, it would have 
made a great difference.” 

“Can it make no difference now?” she 
enquired. 

“I am not going to look for her, if that 
is what you mean,” I said, doggedly. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


265 


“ You never really cared about her then ? ” 
I made no answer. 

“Would you do anything that I asked you 
to do ? ” she said quickly. 

“ Yes.” 

“ Would you burn that letter ? ” 

I hesitated. I grew indignant. I thought 
she had no right to ask that. 

“ I cannot. Think how long I have waited 
for it. Nineteen years ! ” 

“Mere sentiment!” she said. “If you 
will not burn it, will you let me see it ? ” 

I was beyond measure astonished. Still — 

if she could ask such a thing 

I held it out. 

I did not like doing so ; but Man is the 
fool of consistency, and it seemed odd to say 
I would do anything she liked, and then 
refuse her twice. Besides, I had the words 
by heart : 

“ Dear Friend (it ran). 

I grieve for everything that grieves you Eemember 
what you said There was light yesterday There will 
be light to-morrow Remember that I will always wait 
for you 


Your Friend ” 


266 


THE LADY ON THE 


“ No name ! No address ! ” Luoilla said. 
“ Perhaps she did not mean to wait for you, 
after all.” 

I wondered why Luoilla smiled so brightly 
as she said this. It was unreasonable to feel 
vexed — but the reasons of our vexation are 
seldom reasonable. 

“ She was very unpractical if she did.” 

I could not deny it. 

“ Girls are unpractical,” Lucilla said. 
“You never tried to find out her name?” 

“Never. When, to the best of my belief, 
no letter came, I thought quite naturally that 
she felt shocked at what had happened, at 
my father’s conduct — that she would have 
nothing more to do with me.” 

“ Tell me the rest ! ” Luoilla said gently. 

“ The lady who came with her — her mother 
or her aunt, I suppose — had insisted that my 
father should give back at once a large sum 
of money that he owed. He had lived all 
those years under a false name to avoid 
paying. He had forged the signature of her 
husband at the time that he borrowed it. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


267 


Borrowing is the word, you know, if you 
happen to be what is called a gentleman. 
Gentlemen never steal. — Mrs. Hopgood ? Oh 
yes, she was my mother’s cousin, our only 
near relation on this side of the water! — 
How was she taken in? My father made 
her think that he had changed his name 
on account of a legacy. At first he had 
been really unable to pay, you understand. 
Afterwards the love of money grew. Yet 
I believe he always meant to pay in the 
end; they always do mean that. At the 
moment when this lady found him out — 
tracked him down — very properly claimed 
her due — he was involved in some heavy 
speculation. Payment — exposure — whichever 
alternative he faced, meant ruin. He gave her 
a cheque, but he knew that it could not be 
honoured ; that as soon as it was refused, the 
world would know everything. I believe that 
he appealed to her mercy in vain. I do not 
wonder. She had had to wait many years.” 

“ She could not have guessed what w'ould 
happen.” 


268 


THE LADY ON THE 


“ Of course not. It was in all the papers 
directly after, though. She must have known 
then ; any one who lived with her must have 
known. As soon as I had done what I could 
— as soon as I felt sure there was going to be 
no letter for me — I took my mother’s name, 
for that was stainless ; and went abroad.” 

“ Did you tell no one ? ” 

“ My friend knew, of course. My cousin 
rather added to the difficulties of life in 
those days, and I did not try to keep up 
with her. She was very kind, but she held 
that I had no right to dispose of what was 
my own — that I ought not to let it go out 
of the family.” 

“ Ah ! ” said Lucilla, smiling, “ I can 
imagine.” 

“ I thought we should be better friends 
if we had no opportunity of contradicting 
each other for a time. I was right, as 
things turned out. She lost sight of me so 
completely that she thought I was dead. 
When she saw me again, she did not know 
me at first. I suppose I was greatly changed. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


269 


However, I explained that I was only the 
same thing under another title. She has 
been very kind to me since.” 

“ Did you forget ? ” Luoilla said, “ that 
there was some one else — some one whom 
you had asked to wait ? ” 

“No, but I had no right to expect that 
she would remember.” 

“Is it not strange to think,” Luoilla said, 
“ that perhaps, while we are sitting here 
over the fire, perhaps this very night, she 
is waiting ? She is an old maid by this 
time. She has little set ways of her own, 
and her hair has grown gray.” 

“No, no,” I said, “not that! Nineteen. 
I do not think she can have been a day 
older. I myself was only just twenty-one. 
For me she will be nineteen always.” 

“ What colour was her hair? ” said Lucilla. 

“ I do not know. I saw herself, not her 
hair.” 

“If you could see her again at this 
moment, simply because you wished it, 
would you wish?” 


270 


THE LADY ON THE 


“ No, not if she is some one else’s wife ; 
and probably she is.” 

“ She may be dead.” 

“ I think not.” 

“ I think with you,” Luoilla said, “ I think 
she is still alive, waiting. I think she lives 
in a little room like mine. I think she keeps 
a bright fire burning ; and she has friends. 
But she is always waiting.” 

Strange, how feebly the idea of this other 
little room appealed to me ! I did not want 
to see it. 

“ Well, then, she must wait ! ” I said. 
“ I don’t know where her little room is, and 
I am quite happy in this one.” 

Again Luoilla smiled. 

“ Give me back my letter, please ! ” 

She gave it back to me without a word. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


271 


XVIII 

"TT was an odd thing that, having got this 
letter, I did not know what to do with it. 

I had a vague idea of never being parted 
from it, of having it buried with me in my 
grave. 

Just to try how it would feel there, I laid 
it under my pillow when I went to bed ; 
but it made me as uncomfortable as if it 
were alive. I could not sleep a wink for it, 
and, being prosaically anxious to go to work 
again as usual next morning, I had to put 
it away. 

Every day it troubled me more. It was 
like a cry out of the past, the cry of an 
unknown something for something unknown. 
It is harassing to keep a perpetual cry out 
of the past in your waistcoat pocket. 


272 


THE LADY ON THE 


What if Luoilla were right ? What if this 
young lady — now no longer young — should 
be really waiting? I dismissed the thought 
as absurd ; but thought is a servant that, 
however often dismissed, always returns, 
demanding higher wages than before. 

I forgot it, however, when the time came 
for me to go upstairs to the drawingroom 
floor. 

Serenity and peace I had always found 
there, until the night when I told Lucilla 
that I was happier than I had ever been. 
There was more than peace and serenity now. 
There was a force of joyfulness about her that 
nothing could withstand. Every doubt, every 
grief, every fear vanished in her presence. 

She was looking forward eagerly to the next 
mail from Australia, she told me. 

Of course she was, but I did not feel, this 
time, as if her steady happiness were all 
for Kitty. I knew it was her own. I knew 
it to be so solid that I risked giving it a little 
shake. Why were confidences to be all on 
my side ? 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


273 


“What an odd thing memory is ! ” I said. 

“ The shadow comes to be more than the 
substance. The shadow grows so strong 
that people are afraid to free themselves from 
it, even to clasp the substance. I wish I 
could feel that I had set myself free, as you 
have done. It is not so long ago since you 
could not be happy with me, nor let me 
be happy with you, on account of some one 
whom you would never see again.” 

“ I ought not to have said that,” observed 
Lucilla thoughtfully. “ Never is too long 
a word. I did see him again ! ” And she 
glanced up at The UnJcnown. 

At once those jealous fears rushed back 
upon my heart. 

“ Was it the night you were out so long ? ” 

“Ah no ! ” she said, half pityingly, half as 
if she were amused. “ That was the night 
dear old Mrs. Trump was so ill — before she 
had to go to the Infirmary. I was sitting 
up with her. That was why I did not get 
home till late. There was no one else who 
could come before eleven.” 

19 


274 


THE LADY ON THE 


The agonies I had gone through ! And all 
the time Luoilla was sitting peacefully by 
dear old Mrs. Trump, watching the goldfish 
swim round and round in their bowl. What 
a waste of good emotion ! I went back to my 
other agony. 

“Shall you see him when you go away? 
You are going away, you know. You told me 
so on the 26th January.” 

“ Quite true ! ” she said musingly. “ I 
was going away because of him. I had 
determined to pay a little visit to Kitty’s 
father and mother. One can think more 
clearly away from home; but now I know 
he does not want me in the least, and I am 
not going.” 

There was not a shadow of regret in her tone. 

“Will he never want you to go away ? ” 

“ Never.” 

“ Heaven’s blessing on him ! ” said I. 

Again her radiant smile shone out. 

It was March now. The wild winds 
blustered. The bare boughs strained and 


DKAWINGEOOM FLOOR 


275 


budded. Wild showers of rain swept, like a 
lyre, across blue sky. 

One evening, as I sat reading for the 
thousandth time my little brown old letter, 
wondering for the thousandth time where the 
writer of it could be, I heard the piano above 
stairs begin to play, very softly, Les Adieux. 

The next night Lucilla played U Absence, 
and broke off. 

On the third night she ought, of course, to 
have played Le Betour, but she did not. 
She played Les Adieux and L' Absence, one 
after the other ; and stopped short. 

I think now that there came to her, in 
mercy, a warning, a presentiment. 

Casting about at the time for something to 
explain her mood, I said to myself : 

“ The Australian mail is late because of the 
winds. That is why she feels anxious; but 
it will come with the last post.” 

The next day was Thursday. 

As soon as I crossed the threshold, I knew 
that something had happened. A darkness 
hung about Lucilla’s eyes, a grave and gentle 


276 


THE LADY ON THE 


tenderness was in her manner, that boded ill 
from the first. Yet I had not courage to ask ; 
and she, brave as she was in everything, had 
no courage to speak. 

There was a bright fire on the hearth. 

We ate and drank almost in silence, 
conscious that we were only delaying the 
moment that must come for both at last. 

“Why have you been going away and 
never coming back again these last three 
nights ? ” I asked, forcing myself to speak as 
if I had remarked nothing unusual. “ You 
made me feel so wretched that I could have 
howled like a dog.” 

“ I have had a letter,” she said. It means 
that I must go away.” 

“What is the matter?” I asked, bending 
my head, for there was in her voice that 
heralding of sorrow which, at the moment, 
seems worse than definite grief. 

“It’s Kitty. Kitty is dead.” 

I looked up, dazed and stupid, and she met 
my gaze with clear, tearless eyes. 

I only felt that I felt nothing. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


277 


Here had we been going on just as usual — 
eating, drinking, sleeping, talking, reading, 
writing — and Kitty, little Kitty, was dead. 

“ I can’t understand.” 

“Nor I,” Lucilla said, with a heavy sigh. 
“ Such a child herself ! And so happy ! ” 

We sat a long time silent. 

On her pale, wan brow, there were traces of 
that misery which cannot sleep and cannot 
weep. 

“ You have had a bad night,” I said at last. 

A silly thing to say ! 

She gave me a scrap of foreign paper, on 
which two or three words were written in 
pencil. 

“ Auntie dear, will you bring Baby home 1 — K.” 

“ He sent me that, poor man ! ” she said. 
“ The last words that she wrote ! ” 

I looked into the mounting flames, and 
thought how absurd it was that we should be 
there — we so much older — speaking about 
a scrap of Kitty’s writing as if it were a 
relic. 


278 


THE LADY ON THE 


I looked into the mounting flames, and 
thought how it would be with me when the 
fire on that hearth was cold. 

I looked at the reflection of them in the 
smooth shining surface of the piano, and 
thought how it would be with me when 
that casket of sweet sounds stood locked and 
silent. 

I looked at the little picture of the sea. 

“ You must not go ! ” I said, thinking 
aloud. 

“ I have sent a telegram to say that I am 
coming,” she replied, quietly. “I start at 
once — to-morrow.” 

I tried to pull myself together, to say 
something that would help her, and all that I 
could think of was : 

“ Have you the money ? ” 

“Yes,” she said, “I have always kept a 
reserve at the Bank, in case of illness. I am 
drawing on that. I shall put it back by 
and by.” 

“It is a wild-goose chase. You will lose 
what you have hardly earned. You will 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


279 


never even see the child, it will be dead 
before you get there.” 

“Perhaps!” Lucilla said; and something 
in the way she said it made me ashamed. 

“I will come and see you ofi. When do 
you start ? ” 

She shook her head. 

“I do not want that. I would rather go 
by myself. I would rather say goodbye to 
you here. We need not say it yet. I have 
done all that I had to do. There is plenty of 
time.” 

“Plenty of time” — and she was going the 
next day I “ Plenty of time ” — and in an hour 
I must leave her. It seemed to me as if I 
might as well depart then and there. “ Plenty 
of time ” — how could she say the words ? 

“ I suppose you are going third-class — or in 
the steerage ? ” 

“ No, not that. It is not necessary.” 

The daring offer to lend her money froze on 
my lips. 

“When shall you come back?” I asked. 
Not that I felt as if she would. 


280 


THE LADY ON THE 


“ I am keeping on my rooms,” she said. 
“You will see that they are not let over my 
head ? Our landlord would do anything for 
me, I know, but I do not trust his wife in the 
same way.” 

“ Any one who enters this room enters it 
over my dead body.” 

“ You will be kind to Persica ? ” 

“ I will do my best to be a mother to 
Persica,” I said, stretching out my hand to 
the cat. But Persica made eyes that were 
rounder and greener than ever, and stared at 
me with the utmost want of confidence over a 
rim of blue-lined basket. 

These were the only remarks in the 
testamentary line with which Lucilla favoured 
me, and I felt grateful to her, for I could not 
have borne more. I was afraid she was going 
to leave me Tricksy Wee. 

I do not know how the long moments went. 
Every single one as it passed, seemed to be 
the longest in life, and yet I grudged its 
passing. 

“Will you write to me ? ” I said at last. 


DEAWINGROOM FLOOR 


281 


And suddenly I recollected something that 
I could do for her, the only thing that she 
had asked me to do, and I had left undone. 

“ Do not answer yet ! ” I said hurriedly. 

I took the old faded letter from my waist- 
coat pocket. 

“ There ! ” I said. “ Burn that ! ” 

And I put it into her hand, and I turned 
away. 

There was a long silence. 

When I looked round again, Lucilla, a soft 
pink colour flushing her cheeks, the letter still 
in her hand, her eyes most marvellously 
bright, sat gazing at me. 

She held it up ; I could see that her hand 
trembled. 

“ Listen ! ” she said, and indeed it was 
necessary, for my eyes were making my ears 
deaf, “ I have written to you before. This is 
the first letter that I wrote you.” 

The years had fallen away. The veil that 
Time had dropped was lifted. She let the 
writing go. She covered her glowing face 
with her hands. The girl of nineteen 


282 


THE LADY ON THE 


summers stood before me; (but 0, more 
beautiful !) 

I have the letter still. 

She would not see me again. She was 
inexorable as to the next morning. 

“ No, no ! ” she whispered, “ Not again, 
I cannot. Say once again to me those three 
words that you said long ago, in the library ! 
Say nothing more ! Keep me as I am, and I 
will come back to you. We have waited all 
these years, you for me, I for you, we can 
wait half a year longer.” 

And I am waiting. 

And to beguile the days — and for my wife 
when she is married— I have written out what 
my most weak and stumbling words could not 
make clear to her. 

Parting, in middle age, is not the anguish 
of youthful parting; but the risks are in- 
creased, the insurance money is higher. I 
watch the winds, ever before my eyes I see 
the restless waves. Stronger than winds and 
waves is my faith that she will return to me. 


DEAWINGEOOM FLOOE 


283 


Her life upon the treacherous water is not 
a whit more guarded than mine in the little 
dingy street where we dwelt together. 

It may be — I do not think it will — it may 
be that, before she returns, I shall have 
started on a longer voyage over that unknown 
sea whither we are all bound. If this should 
happen, I would leave behind me something 
that would recall to her the days of my 
unconscious wooing, something that should 
tell her, however faintly, that through all 
my life, from the day on which Khartoum 
fell, and the door of that dreary house in 
Bayswater shut behind the bright-eyed girl, 
to the day when I set forth on death with 
hope undying, and see again before me the 
same bright eyes, there has been nothing, 
there will be nothing in my heart of hearts 
but this one word, 

Lucilla. 


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